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IC-NRLF 


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TRUANCY 


A  STUDY  OF  THE  MENTAL,  PHYSICAL  AND 

SOCIAL  FACTORS  OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF 

NON-ATTENDANCE  AT  SCHOOL 


BY 
ELISABETH  A.  IRWIN 

Field  Worker  of  the  Committee  on  Hygiene  of  School  Children  of  the  Public 
Education  Association 


FROM    THE    PRESIDENT'S    OFFICE 
TO  THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


PUBLIC  EDUCATION  ASSOCIATION  OF  THE 

CITY  OF  NEW  YORK 

JUNE,  1915 


TRUANCY 


A  STUDY  OF  THE  MENTAL,  PHYSICAL  AND 

SOCIAL  FACTORS  OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF 

NON-ATTENDANCE  AT  SCHOOL 


BY 
ELISABETH  A.  IRWIN 

Field  Worker  of  the  Committee  on  Hygiene  of  School  Children  of  the  Public 
Education  Association 


PUBLIC  EDUCATION  ASSOCIATION  OF  THE 

CITY  OF  NEW  YORK 

JUNE,  1915 


V 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 5 

SCOPE  AND  METHOD  OF  THE  INVESTIGATION 9 

I.  MENTALITY  OF  TRUANTS 14 

II.  HOME  STATUS  OF  TRUANTS 20 

Truants  from  Incomplete  Economic  Families 20 

Truants  who  have  no  mothers 21 

Truants  whose  mothers  are  widows 23 

Truants  whose  parents  both  work 24 

Truants  who  have  step-parents 25 

Truants  from  Complete  Economic  Families 25 

Comparison  Between  Number  of  Truants  and  Non-Truants 

from  Incomplete  Economic  Families 28 

III.  PHYSICAL  FITNESS  OF  TRUANTS 30 

IV.  THE  FAILURE  OF  TRUANTS  TO  CONNECT  SCHOOL  WITH  LIFE 41 

Non- promotion  as  a  Cause  of  Non-attendance 42 

What  Truants  do  when  not  in  School 42 

The  Truant's  Idea  of  his  Wage-earning  Career 44 

SUMMARY 46 

APPENDIX 48 


313976 


INTRODUCTION 

From  its  inception,  the  Public  Education  Association  has  re- 
garded the  enforcement  of  compulsory  school  attendance  and  its 
kindred  problems  of  child  welfare  of  primary  importance  in  its 
program  of  service  to  the  New  York  City  schools.  While  it  has 
approached  this  question  from  many  angles,  it  has  not  until  now 
presented  an  intensive  study  of  the  mental  and  physical  status 
of  the  children  coming  to  the  attention  of  the  attendance  de- 
partment. 

Through  its  Committee  on  Compulsory  Education  it  has 
taken  active  part  in  the  evolution  of  the  legislation  culminating 
in  the  establishment  of  the  present  Bureau  of  Attendance,  Census 
and  Child  Welfare  in  the  Department  of  Education,  and  through 
its  present  director  has  made  several  studies  in  the  administrative 
problems  involved,  three  of  which  have  been  published  by  the 
Association  in  the  last  two  or  three  years.  Through  its  visiting 
teacher  staff,  for  the  last  seven  years,  it  has  not  only  been  treat- 
ing cases  of  maladjustment  to  school  requirements  growing  out 
of  adverse  home,  school  and  neighborhood  conditions,  which 
only  too  frequently  lead  to  irregularity  of  attendance,  but  it  has 
endeavored  to  get  back  of  the  causes  of  truancy  by  taking  up 
cases  of  irregular  or  intermittent  attendance  referred  to  it  by  the 
school  principals.  The  work  of  the  Association  in  this  direction 
has  been  published  for  the  period  ending  with  the  school  year 
1911,  and  a  more  comprehensive  and  exhaustive  description  and 
analysis  of  the  work  for  the  past  two  years  is  nearing  completion 
and  will  appear  shortly. 

The  study  comprehended  in  this  report  was  begun  in  the 
autumn  of  1913  by  Miss  Elisabeth  Irwin,  field  worker  of  the 
Committee  on  Hygiene  of  School  Children  of  the  Association, 
who  was  eminently  fitted  for  the  task  because  of  her  previous 
experience  with  problems  of  mental  defect  in  connection  with 
her  work  for  the  Association  in  co-operating  with  the  Department 
of  Ungraded  Classes  of  the  Board  of  Education.  The  scope  and 
method  of  her  investigation  are  clearly  outlined  in  the  first  sec- 
tion of  her  report.  The  aim  has  been,  briefly,  to  find  what  might 

5 


be  called  the  purely  human  factors  in  the  problem  through  study- 
ing intensively  all  the  cases  actually  reported  from  certain  schools 
to  the  Department  of  Attendance  during  an  entire  school  year, 
to  apply,  where  possible,  the  remedy  deemed  advisable  and  to 
measure  its  effectiveness. 

Associated  with  Miss  Irwin  in  this  study  were  Miss  Jessie  L. 
Louderback,  who  did  a  large  share  of  the  home  visiting  and  pre- 
pared the  entire  third  section  of  the  report,  dealing  with  the 
physical  fitness  of  the  children  studied,  Mr.  Frederick  W.  Ellis 
and  Miss  Helen  Hannahs  of  the  Department  of  Social  Research 
of  the  Neurological  Institute,  who  gave  a  great  deal  of  their  time 
to  detailed  and  intensive  psychological  examination  of  a  group  of 
twenty-four  boys  of  the  borderline  type  of  mentality,  Miss  Ruth 
S.  True  of  the  visiting  teacher  staff  of  the  Association,  Dr. 
William  Caldwell,  who  gave  two  hours  every  Monday  afternoon 
to  the  physical  examination  of  children  for  Miss  Louderback 
and  Miss  True,  and  Miss  Margaret  Vanderbilt,  who  acted  as  a 
volunteer  for  about  two  months. 

The  means  of  studying  the  physical  fitness  of  the  boys  whose 
records  are  included  in  the  study  was  provided  by  the  establish- 
ment of  a  temporary  clinic  at  the  rooms  of  one  of  the  kinder- 
gartens of  the  New  York  Kindergarten  Association  in  West 
52nd  Street.  A  thorough  stripped  examination  was  made  with 
the  permission  of  the  boy's  parent,  who  was  invited  to  be  present 
and  in  some  cases  was. 

The  manuscript  of  the  report  has  been  in  the  hands  of  the 
Director  of  the  Bureau  of  Attendance  and  Child  Welfare  of  the 
Department  of  Education  during  the  greater  part  of  the  present 
year  and  has  been  critically  read  by  many  of  those  directly  con- 
cerned with  the  phases  of  the  problem  which  it  seeks  to  interpret. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  chief  recommendation  of  the 
study — that  a  thorough  and  competent  psychological  and  physi- 
cal examination  be  made  of  every  case  reported  for  truancy  and 
that  those  cases  found  to  be  mentally  defective  be  not  given 
punitive  treatment  as  truants  but  be  removed  from  the  juris- 
diction of  the  compulsory  attendance  department  entirely  and 
educated  in  the  schools  or  in  institutions  as  feeble-minded  chil- 
dren— has  been  approved  by  the  director  of  the  Bureau  of 
Attendance  and  Child  Welfare  and  is  being  worked  out  in  his 
experimental  district  with  the  assistance  of  Miss  Irwin  and  others 
who  are  co-operating  in  giving  mental  and  physical  examinations 


to  those  reported  to  the  Bureau.  It  is  also  interesting  to  note 
that  the  Director  of  the  Bureau  is  desirous  of  securing  the 
appointment  of  psychologists  to  organize  this  work  permanently 
as  part  of  its  service  during  the  coming  year.  With  this  effort 
the  Public  Education  Association  is  in  hearty  accord,  as  it  be- 
lieves that  Miss  Irwin  and  her  collaborators  have  amply  demon- 
strated the  need  for  just  this  kind  of  service  to  handle  wisely  the 
problem  of  attendance  in  the  public  schools. 

HOWARD  W.  NUDD, 

June  15, 1915  Director,  Public  Education  Association 


SCOPE  AND  METHOD  OF  THE  INVESTIGATION 

(It  has  been  noticeable  in  all  the  recent  studies  and  reports  on 
the  subject  of  truancy  that  very  little  attention  has  been  paid 
to  the  actual  human  beings  who  constitute  the  problem.  The 
duties  of  the  school,  the  court  and  the  truant  officer  have  been 
duly  stressed.  Home  and  neighborhood  conditions  have  been 
taken  into  consideration  as  parts  of  the  problem.^  But  of  the 
type  ofboVj.his  psychology  and  his  motives!  one  finds  no  descrip- 


tion in  the  literature  on~trle~subjec£  It  is  to  this  phase  of  the 
problem  that  the  greatest  attention  has  been  paid  in  this  study. 

The  cases  studied  have  not  been  selected  according  to  any  defi- 
nition of  truancy  but  have  been  taken  from  the  attendance 
officers'  lists  as  they  came,  excluding  only  those  known  to  be 
absent  because  of  definite  illness.  Also  a  number  of  cases  begun 
have  been  dropped  upon  finding; that  the  absence  for  which  they 
had  been  reported  was  merely  accidental  and  that  the  child  re- 
mained in  school  after  being  returned  once.  All  other  cases  of 
non-attendance  have  been  included. 

The  study  has  been  carried  on  in  two  different  neighborhoods, 
in  order  that  differences  in  nationalities  and  environment  might 
receive  due  consideration.  The  greater  part  of  the  work  has 
been  done  on  the  middle  West  Side  where  the  population  is 
largely  Irish- American  and  German-American  with  a  few  Italians. 
Twenty-seven  cases,  however,  were  taken  from  an  East  Side 
school  of  Jews  and  Italians  in  order  that  the  investigator  might 
have  some  basis  for  comparison. 

One  hundred  and  fifty  cases  were  studied  in  all.  Twenty  of 
these  were  girls  on  the  West  Side.  Twenty-seven  were  boys  on 
the  East  Side.  One  hundred  and  three  were  boys  on  the  West 
Side.  The  children  studied  were  all  from  seven  schools,  six  on 
the  West  Side  in  two  school  districts  and  one  on  the  East  Side. 

The  six  West  Side  schools  were  located  between  59th  Street 
and  34th  Street  west  of  Sixth  Avenue.  In  spite  of  the  large 

9 


10 

geographical  area  from  which  these  schools  drew  their  pupils,  the 
population  is  almost  homogeneous.  Toward  the  south  of  the 
district,  second  and  third  generation  Irish  and  German  give  the 
character  to  the  neighborhood  throughout,  except  for  a  smatter- 
ing of  so-called  "foreigners,"  Slavs  and  Italians.  Hard  driving 
poverty  and  its  only  antidote  drink  leave  a  very  small  margin 
of  either  leisure  or  intelligence  to  consider  the  advantages  of  edu- 
cation. In  a  community  without  ambition  and  without  ideals, 
it  is  small  wonder  that  the  number  of  truants  is  large. 

The  East  Side  school  in  which  twenty-seven  cases  of  truancy 
were  studied  was  a  boys'  school  of  about  2700  pupils,  Jewish  and 
Italian.  The  proportion  of  truants  in  this  school  was  far  smaller 
than  in  any  of  the  West  Side  schools.  The  Jewish  boys  are 
anxious  for  an  education  and  their  parents  are  anxious  for  them 
to  have  it.  Every  form  of  public  opinion  exerts  pressure  in  this 
direction.  While  on  the  West  Side  the  lawless  spirit  of  an  easy 
going  Irish  neighborhood  not  only  tolerates  but  encourages  an 
attitude  of  indifference  toward  the  schools.  In  the  East  Side 
school  the  parent  comes  when  he  is  sent  for  and,  unless  a  good 
reason  exists  for  a  boy's  absence,  the  truant  is  returned  to  school 
even  at  the  cost  of  some  trouble  on  the  part  of  the  parent.  Here 
the  older  brothers  and  sisters,  even  those  who  have  arrived  in 
this  country  too  late  to  profit  by  public  education  themselves, 
also  respect  the  opportunity  the  school  offers.  It  is  not  unusual 
for  a  big  brother  to  co-operate  even  to  the  extent  of  losing  half  a 
day's  pay  by  staying  home  from  work  and  hunting  out  the  de- 
linquent young  brother  in  his  illicit  haunt  and  bringing  him  to 
school  by  the  collar.  Such  was  the  case  with  young  Solly,  who 
was  threatened  in  the  presence  of  the  principal  with  all  the  tor- 
ments of  this  world  and  the  world  to  come  if  ever  again  he  failed 
to  "show  up  and  learn  his  lessons,  too."  Solly,  who,  armed  with 
a  rainbow-like  array  of  dispensary  tickets,  had  been  working  the 
old  game  of  "sick  and  had  to  go  to  the  doctor,"  took  a  brace 
and  came  to  school  after  that.  When  your  brother  loses  half  a 
day's  work  to  make  you  go  to  school  he  means  business  and  you 
begin,  yourself,  to  see  that  education  is  important.  Thus  the 
tonic  atmosphere  of  East  Side  sentiment  constantly  operates  in 
the  right  direction. 

The  ratio  of  the  twenty  West  Side  girls  to  the  one  hundred 
three  West  Side  boys  in  this  study  fairly  represents  the  propor- 
tion of  girl  to  boy  truants  in  that  neighborhood.  The  remark  of 


II 

one  of  the  attendance  officers  actually  expresses  the  situation,  "If 
there  was  a  truant  school  for  girls,  there  would  be  more  girl  tru- 
ants all  right,  but  now  there's  no  place  to  put  them,  what's  the 
use?"  The  idea  behind  this  seems  to  be  that  the  principals  feel 
that  it  is  useless  to  report  girls  for  truancy  when  pushed  to  its 
logical  conclusion,  for  if  the  girl  or  the  parent  proves  obdurate 
there  is  no  way  of  forcing  the  issue.  This  all  goes  back  however 
to  the  accepted  view  of  the  attendance  officers  and  of  many  of  the 
principals  that  the  truant  school  is  the  cure  for  truancy. 

The  method  of  the  investigation  has  been  to  interview  every 
child,  his  parents,  his  school  teacher,  principal  or  head  of  de- 
partment, and  the  attendance  officer,  and  to  form  an  estimate  of 
each  case  from  a  synthesis  of  these  opinions.  In  some  cases  it  has 
been  possible  to  discover  one  cause  which  has  seemed  sufficient 
to  account  for  the  habit  of  truancy.  In  most  cases,  however,  a 
combination  of  circumstances  has  existed  which  has  made  it  im- 
possible to  select  and  name  one  factor  as  the  definite  cause  of  the 
habit  of  truancy.  The  figures  given  throughout  the  report  there- 
fore state  the  number  of  cases  where  certain  circumstances  exist 
without  definitely  stating  that  any  one  thing  was  the  absolute 
cause.  The  conclusions  are  therefore  drawn  from  the  fact  that 
the  same  circumstance  with  the  same  apparent  result  existed  in 
enough  cases  to  justify  the  causal  connection. 

The  economic  status  of  the  family,  while  it  has  not  been  entirely 
ignored,  has  not  been  studied  statistically.  The  fact  in  this  con- 
nection which  has  been  most  definitely  taken  into  consideration 
is  whether  the  family  was  a  complete  economic  family,  that  is, 
both  parents  living,  the  father  earning  and  the  mother  staying 
at  home  to  feed,  clothe  and  control  the  children.  For,  in  so  far 
as  the  family  is  complete  or  incomplete,  the  functioning  of  the 
home  as  a  moralizing  or  demoralizing  influence  is  affected. 

The  investigation  was  not  begun  with  a  fixed  group  of  questions 
to  be  answered  by  parents,  teachers  and  children,  but  rather  by 
extensive  interviews  with  each  until  it  became  evident  that  certain 
kinds  of  material  were  irrelevant,  other  kinds  unreliable,  while 
still  other  facts  seemed  indispensable  and  worth  verifying  even 
at  the  expense  of  more  time  than  had  originally  been  allotted. 
The  following  outline  of  procedure  grew  out  of  the  early  inter- 
views : 


12 

I.  Is  the  boy  mentally — Defective — Normal — Precocious? 

A.  If  defective — 

1.  Visit  home  and  make  home  record. 

2.  Have  physical  examination. 

3.  Work  to  remedy  physical  defects. 

4.  Put  in  ungraded  class. 

5.  Keep  record  of  attendance. 

6.  Classify  and  put  minimum  of  work  on  case. 

B.  If  Normal  or  Precocious — 

1.  Visit  home  and  make  home  record  and  hygiene  card. 

2.  Have  physical  examination. 

3.  Work  to  remedy  physical  defects. 

4.  Make  friends  with  family — all  possible  members. 

5.  Keep  close  record  of  attendance. 

6.  Follow  out  suggestions  gained  from  the   following 
interview  with  the  boy. 

II.  Interview  with  the  boy  (if  normal) — 

1.  Do  you  "go  on  the  hook"? 

2.  What  do  you  do  when  out  of  school? 

3.  Did  you  do  this  yesterday,  the  day  before  and  so  on? 

(Story  of  different  days.) 

4.  How  did  you  begin? 

5.  With  whom  do  you  go  on  hook? 

6.  Names  of  friends — 

7.  Where  do  they  live? 

8.  Where  go  to  school? 

9.  What   grade? 
10.  How  old? 

n.  What  class  are  you  in? 

12.  Teacher's  name? 

13.  Do  you  like  her? 

14.  Do  you  get  on  well  in  lessons? 

15.  Which  one  best? 

1 6.  Which  one  least? 

17.  Did  you  do  badly  in  same  one  last  term? 

1 8.  What  was  last  class  where  you  did  all  right  in  that? 

(Compare  with  class  where  truancy  began.) 

19.  Which  class  did  you  fall  behind  in? 

20.  Who  was  teacher? 

21.  Was  she  cross? 

22.  What  seemed  to  be  the  trouble  with  that  subject? 

23.  Would  you  like  help  in  that  subject? 

24.  Have  you  any  brothers  and  sister  in  this  school? 

25.  What  classes? 

26.  What  other  schools? 

27.  Who  is  your  best  friend  in  family? 

28.  Is  your  mother  home  in  day  time? 

29.  What  does  she  work  at? 


13 

30.  What  does  your  father  do? 

31.  Your  big  brothers? 

32.  What  are  you  going  to  do? 

33.  Did  you  ever  know  anyone  who  did  that?     When? 
Where? 

34.  How  much  do  you  think  you  will  make? 

35.  What  can  you  work  up  to? 

36.  Did  you  ever  think  of  learning  a  trade? 

37.  Would  you  like  to  be  a  printer? 

38.  Plumber? 

39.  Electrician? 

40.  Mechanic? 

41.  Builder? 

42.  Did  you  know  you  could  go  to  a  special  school  and 
learn  one  of  those  trades? 

The  information  has  for  the  most  part  gathered  itself  about  the 
four  following  questions  concerning  each  child : 
I.  Is  this  child  of  normal  mentality? 

II.  Is  this  child  the  member  of  a  normal  economic  family? 
(That  is,  both  parents  living,  father  earning,  mother 
at  home.) 

III.  Is  this  child  below  the  average  physically? 

IV.  Has  this  child  any  outlook  or  ambition,  immediate  or 

future,  that  makes  school  seem  logical,  desirable  or 
necessary? 


I.  MENTALITY  OF  TRUANTS 

The  mental  normality  of  the  children  studied  has  been  deter- 
mined first  by  the  use  of  the  Binet  Test  which  has  divided  them 
roughly  into  three  groups, — Normal,  Defective,  and  Border- 
line. The  first  two  groups  claimed  all  of  the  children  about 
whom  no  possible  doubts  could  be  raised.  The  results  of  the 
tests  were  verified  by  school  records,  family  histories,  and 
opinions  of  teachers  and  principals  familiar  with  the  children. 
These  two  groups  included  no  children  about  whom  there  was 
any  doubt  or  difference  of  opinion. 

The  third  group  originally  contained  54  disputed  cases.  This 
group  was  isolated  and  made  the  subject  of  special  study. 
Twenty-four  were  examined  by  the  doctors  of  the  Department  of 
Ungraded  Classes  of  the  Board  of  Education,  twenty-four  were 
examined  by  the  Psychologists  of  the  Neurological  Institute,  and 
six  by  hospital  clinics.  This  group  of  doubtful  cases  was  in 
turn  divided  into  three  groups, — normal,  defective,  and  border- 
line,— according  to  the  opinion  of  the  specialists.  After  this 
further  scrutiny,  there  still  remained  12  cases  which  had  to  be 
classed  as  doubtful  or  borderline.  This  group  contains  those 
children  who  are  still  too  young  or  too  high-grade  for  even 
specialists  to  say  whether  or  not  they  are  normal  mentally.  No 
child  has  been  left  in  this  group  from  failure  to  obtain  a  thorough 
psychological  examination. 

The  24  cases  which  have  been  studied  by  the  Neurological  In- 
stitute are  by  far  the  most  interesting  psychological  cases.  The 
detailed  analysis  of  four  of  these  cases  is  given  in  the  appendix. 
All  of  the  24  in  this  group  have  been  similarly  studied. 

The  final  classification  of  the  total  150  cases  studied  is  given 
in  Table  I. 

Of  all  the  truants,  43  per  cent  were  actually  feeble-minded  and 
8  per  cent  were  borderline  cases.  One  of  the  salient  character- 
istics of  the  mental  defective  is  never  to  do  anything  regularly 
and  on  time  except  through  training  and  habit  formation  or  from 
outside  compulsion.  A  methodical  and  well  ordered  life  is 

14 


essentially  the  product  of  a  normal  mind.  Any  feeling  of  accom- 
plishment or  daily  success  in  the  tasks  assigned  in  the  regular 
school  grades  is  out  of  the  question  for  a  mental  defective.  And 
yet  with  one  exception  none  of  these  mental  defectives  were  in 
ungraded  classes  which  are  provided  for  the  education  of  the 
feeble-minded.  Therefore  all  of  them  were  improperly  placed 
in  their  school  work.  This  one  cause  alone,  though  contributory 
causes  often  exist,  would  seem  to  account  for  the  habit  of  truancy 
in  43  per  cent  of  all  the  cases  studied.  For  it  is  unreasonable  to 
expect  any  child  to  go  willingly  month  after  month,  year  after 
year,  to  a  class  where  he  constantly  meets  failure  and  reproof, 

TABLE  I. — ONE  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  TRUANTS  CLASSIFIED  ACCORD- 
ING  TO    NORMAL,    DEFECTIVE   AND    BORDERLINE   MENTALITY 


Group 

Normal 

Defective 

Borderline 

Total 

No. 

9 
15 
49 

Per 
cent 

No. 

9 

8 
48 

Per 
cent 

No. 

Per 

cent 

No. 

Per 
cent 

Girls  

45-00 
55-56 
47-57 

45.00 
29.63 
46.60 

2 

4 
6 

10.00 
14.81 

5-83 

20 

27 
103 

100 
IOO 
IOO 

East  Side  Boys  
West  Side  Boys  

Total  

73 

48.67 

65 

43-33 

12 

8.00 

150 

IOO 

GRAPHIC  REPRESENTATION  OF  THE  PER  CENT  OF  TRUANTS  IN  EACH  OF  THE  SEX 
GROUPS    THAT   ARE    OF    NORMAL     DEFECTIVE    OR   BORDERLINE   MENTALITY 


BORDERLINE 


NORMAL  GJ 


GROUP 

Girla 

Bast  Side  Boys 

West  Side  Boys 

TOTAL 


discouragement  and  derision.  There  is  a  common  nightmare, — 
almost  everyone  is  familiar  with  it, — in  which  one  is  facing  an 
impossible  task,  a  mountain  that  is  too  steep  to  climb,  a  stone 
that  is  too  heavy  to  lift,  a  door  that  will  not  unlock.  Teachers 
have  said  that  it  comes  to  them  in  the  form  of  a  class  that 
they  cannot  control.  Most  of  us  know  in  our  waking  hours  also 
as  the  most  unpleasant  situation  in  life,  the  task  that  is  not  only 
too  hard  but  impossible.  And  yet  it  is  just  this  situation  that  we 
are  asking  these  poor  children  of  limited  intelligence  to  face  each 
day  and  if  they  do  not  welcome  it  gladly  we  call  them  truants. 


16 

Legally*  these  cases  do  not  belong  to  the  attendance  officer  and 
it  is  simply  because  their  true  difficulty  is  undetected  that  43 
per  cent  of  the  150  cases  were  on  the  truant  lists  at  all.  If  43 
per  cent  of  the  actual  number  are  mentally  defective,  surely  a 
much  larger  proportion  than  43  per  cent  of  the  attendance  offi- 
cer's time  is  spent  on  these  cases,  for  they  are  the  hardest  and 
most  hopeless  and  the  least  improvable  of  all  the  cases  with 
which  he  has  to  deal.  Every  effort  made  by  the  attendance 
officer  on  these  cases  is  an  effort  to  push  a  square  peg  into  a  round 
hole. 

The  attendance  officer's  time  is  largely  spent,  of  necessity,  in 
dealing  with  parents  on  the  subject  of  a  boy's  absence.  In  the 
case  of  mental  defectives  who  cannot  get  on  in  school,  there  is 
no  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the  child.  In  a  number  of  cases 
where  children  were  placed  in  ungraded  classes,  the  attendance 
thereafter  took  care  of  itself.  If  this  fails  to  happen  because 
of  the  deep-seated  habit  of  truancy,  the  visiting  teachers  of  the 
Department  of  Ungraded  Classes  are  the  logical  attendance 
officers  of  this  department.  The  children  cannot,  in  any  event, 
be  taken  to  court  and  must  be  dealt  with  by  persuasion  rather 
than  by  force.  When  this  department  becomes  adequate  to 
search  out  and  care  for  all  the  mental  defectives  in  the  schools, 
the  list  of  all  truants  will  automatically  grow  less.  In  the  mean- 
time, a  psychological  examination  should  be  given  to  every  child 
as  soon  as  he  is  listed  as  a  truant  by  the  compulsory  attendance 
department  and  unless  he  is  found  mentally  normal,  he  should  be 
referred  to  the  Department  of  Ungraded  Classes  for  admission  and 
dropped  from  the  list  of  truants.  The  additional  amount  of 
work  this  would  seem  to  involve  on  the  part  of  the  attendance 
officer  would  be  far  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  decrease 

*  Article  23,  Section  621  of  the  Education  Law  of  1910,  as  amended  by 
Chapter  710  of  the  laws  of  1911,  reads  as  follows: 

"Required  attendance  upon  instruction. — i.  Every  child  within  the  com- 
pulsory school  ages,  in  proper  physical  and  mental  condition  to  attend  school, 
residing  in  a  city  or  school  district  having  a  population  of  five  thousand  or 
more  and  employing  a  superintendent  of  schools,  shall  regularly  attend  upon 
instruction  as  follows: 

"  (a)  Each  child  between  seven  and  fourteen  years  of  age  shall  attend  the 
entire  time  during  which  the  school  attended  is  in  session,  which  period  shall 
not  be  less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty  days  of  actual  school. 

"  (b)  Each  child  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  years  of  age  not  regularly  and 
lawfully  engaged  in  any  useful  employment  or  service,  and  to  whom  an  em- 
ployment certificate  has  not  been  duly  issued  under  the  provisions  of  the  labor 
law,  shall  so  attend  the  entire  time  during  which  the  school  attended  is  in 
session." 


in  the  number  of  truants  to  be  handled.  The  43  per  cent  of 
mental  defectives  now  handled  illegally  would  then  require  only 
one  examination  in  order  to  be  eliminated  while  at  present  they 
require  an  unlimited  number  of  home  visits  and  remain  on  the 
lists  from  one  year  to  the  next,  until  the  arrival  of  the  sixteenth 
birthday  finally  removes  them. 

TABLE  II. — DISTRIBUTION  OF    AGES  OF    TRUANTS  AMONG  NORMAL 
AND   DEFECTIVE* 


Age 

Boys 

Girls 

<-p    .    i 

Normal 

Defective 

Total 

Normal 

Defective 

Total 

i  otai 

7vrs 

i 

i 

i 

8            .... 

2 

2 

2 

Q 

I 

I 

I 

10         

6 

c 

II 

1  1 

II          

17 

I 

Id 

12            

9 

c 

14. 

i 

i 

2 

16 

13            
14 

18 

18 

13 

II 

31 
20 

7 

i 
6 

8 
6 

39 
•je 

I* 

6 

21 

27 

•z 

i 

4. 

-21 

Total 

74 

56 

130 

ii 

9 

20 

150 

The  age  table  (Table  II)  shows  that  there  were  only  six 
normal  boys  of  fifteen  years  of  age  who  had  not  managed  by 
some  means  to  get  in  the  required  number  of  days  and  up  to  the 
required  grade  to  obtain  working  papers  and  therefore  to  make 
an  escape  from  school.  Twenty-one  mental  defectives  of  this 
same  age,  however,  were  stranded,  most  of  them  in  working 
paper  classes  where  they  were  obliged  to  remain,  off  and  on,  till 
their  sixteenth  birthday  should  release  them.  These  are  the 
boys  that  play  hide  and  seek  with  the  attendance  officer.  One  of 
them  remarked  about  another  who  had  been  sent  to  the  Parental 
School,  "I  never  did  think  the  Troonty'd  find  Mike.  He  had  a 
swell  bunk  on  -  -  Street.  Some  one  must  have  squealed  on 
him.  Oh,  well,  he'll  be  back  soon."  The  older  boys  who  know 
all  hope  of  getting  working  papers  is  in  vain  take  a  real  pleasure 
in  this  game  of  hide  and  seek,  with  the  heavy  penalty  of  being 
sent  to  the  truant  school  if  they  are  caught.  Many  of  them  have 

*  In  this  table  the  classification  doubtful  mentality  has  been  included  under 
normal.  7  years  means  7  but  not  yet  8.  8  years  means  past  8  but  not  9,  etc. 


18 

the  friendly  attitude  of  opponents  in  a  tennis  match  toward  the 
pursuing  officer  when  they  meet  on  any  neutral  ground,  such  as 
the  school.  They  hang  around  and  joke  as  if  rather  enjoying  the 
opportunity  of  a  friendly  truce.  The  writer  was  much  enlight- 
ened by  one  of  these  encounters.  The  attendance  officer  was 
waiting  for  the  12  o'clock  gong  to  sound  when  Pietro  came  loung- 
ing in.  "Hello  there,  Hick,"  he  addressed  his  officer  by  the 
common  nickname  of  the  neighborhood  for  him.  "You  got 
Joe,  didn't  you?  I  thought  you  would.  I  told  him  he'd  get 
caught.  Who  was  the  judge?  Oh,  I  might  have  known,  that 
young  judge  sent  me  up  twice.  Say,  didn't  I  strike  luck  that 
last  time  you  had  me  down?  I  knew  when  I  saw  that  old  man 
that  my  skin  was  safe.  He  won't  jail  no  one  when  he  don't  have 
to.  When  he  gets  to  Heaven  I  believe  he'll  say  to  God,  'Say,  let 
everybody  out  of  jail.'  He  don't  like  to  send  fellers  up.  He  told 
me  so.  Well,  you  don't  catch  me  takin'  no  more  chances,  any- 
how, Hick.  You'll  find  me  in  school  the  rest  of  this  week  all 
right.  Say,  Finnegan's  back,  you  seen  him?  I  got  to  go.  Me 
teacher  wants  a  bottle  of  milk.  So  long!" 

Nothing  can  be  expected  from  these  boys  so  long  as  they  re- 
main in  the  ordinary  grades.  Even  the  ungraded  class  often 
has  hard  work  to  hold  them  when  they  have  passed  so  many 
years  in  hating  and  dreading  school.  If,  however,  they  could 
be  placed  in  these  classes  before  the  truancy  habit  has  taken  hold 
of  .them  many  of  them  would  never  become  a  problem  at  all. 

In  the  9  cases  of  mentally  defective  girls  there  was  no  economic 
necessity  for  their  non-attendance.  All  but  three  of  these  girls 
came  from  complete  economic  families,  and  two  of  these  three 
were  orphans  living  with  married  sisters  and  could  go  to  school 
if  they  wanted  to.  Their  non-attendance  seemed  to  be  cases  of 
truancy  pure  and  simple  and  are  to  be  accounted  for  on  exactly 
the  same  grounds  as  the  cases  of  the  mentally  defective  boys. 
They  were  perhaps  even  more  unanimous  in  their  protest  that 
they  did  not  like  school.  They  had  developed  irregular  habits 
and  fallen  behind  in  their  classes,  couldn't  learn  to  do  arithmetic, 
wanted  to  go  to  work,  didn't  like  to  be  the  only  big  girl  in  the 
class,  and  so  on  through  all  the  rest  of  the  alleged  reasons  with 
which  the  feeble-minded  bby  or  girl  explains  his  dislike  of  the 
school  room. 

Of  the  150  truants,  44  have  records  at  the  Children's  Court. 
These  do  not  include  those  who  have  been  sent  to  truant  schools 


19 

with  the  parents'  consent.  Six  of  these  44  children  have  records 
of  two  offenses  and  2  of  three  offenses,  I  of  four  offenses,  mak- 
ing 57  court  entries  for  the  44  truants.  The  charges  made  against 
them  were  as  follows: 

Petty  larceny 2 

Assault I 

An  ungovernable  child I 

In  danger  of  becoming  morally  depraved I 

Unlawful  entry . I 

Larceny 3 

Injury  to  property 4 

Child  labor  law 3 

Burglary 4 

Disorderly  conduct 5 

Compulsory  education  law 12 

Special  proceedings 20 

57 

Of  these  44  children  with  court  records  only  13  are  of  normal 
mentality;  5  are  borderline  cases  and  26  are  mentally  defective. 

The  cases  of  borderline  mentality  scarcely  belong  to  the  attend- 
ance officer  more  than  the  definitely  feeble-minded.  These 
cases  are  few  and  scattered  and  cannot  therefore  be  placed  to- 
gether in  one  class  for  the  kind  of  education  they  need,  but  they 
should  always  be  in  some  kind  of  special  class  for  observation 
and  should  be  marked  off  in  the  mind  of  the  teacher  as  objects 
of  special  care  and  consideration.  Often  these  boys  are  returned 
after  examination  for  an  ungraded  class  to  the  grade  in  which  they 
failed,  only  to  continue  to  fail  in  the  same  manner.  It  is  only 
fair  that  any  boy  who  is  even  suspected  of  being  mentally  de- 
fective should  be  treated  as  though  he  were,  that  is,  with  special 
kindness,  gentleness,  and  patience,  until  he  begins  to  do  the  very 
best  he  can.  Not  until  he  puts  forth  his  best  efforts  is  it  possible 
to  discover  what  his  real  ability  is.  The  only  answer  to  the  fre- 
quent comment,  "He  isn't  defective;  he  could  do  better  if  he 
wanted  to"  of  the  teacher  is  "make  him  want  to."  This  is  as 
true  of  school  attendance  as  of  school  accomplishment. 

So  much  for  the  43  per  cent  who  are  mentally  defective  and  the 
8  per  cent  of  doubtful  mentality.  The  following  tables  and  sec- 
tions will  apply  to  the  49  per  cent  who  are  mentally  normal. 


II.  HOME  STATUS  OF  TRUANTS 

TRUANTS  FROM  INCOMPLETE  ECONOMIC  FAMILIES 
Table  III  shows  the  percentage  of  the  mentally  normal  children 
who  come  from  homes  that  are  economically  complete  or  incom- 
plete, that  is,  the  father  and  mother  both  living,  the  father  earn- 
ing, and  the  mother  staying  at  home  to  take  care  of  the  children. 

TABLE   III. — NUMBER  AND  PERCENTAGE  OF   TRUANTS   OF   NORMAL 

MENTALITY    WHO    COME    FROM    COMPLETE    AND    INCOMPLETE 

ECONOMIC   FAMILIES 


Group 

Truants  coming 
from  complete 
economic 
families 

Truants  coming 
from  incomplete 
economic 
families 

Total 

No. 

Per  cent 

No. 

Per  cent 

No. 

Per 
cent 

Girls...                            

3 

7 
9 

33-33 
46.77 
18.00 

6 
8 
40 

66.67 

53-33 
82.00 

9 
15 
49 

100 
IOO 
100 

Kast  Side  Boys      

West  Side  Boys  

Total  

19 

25.68 

54 

74-32 

73 

IOO 

GRAPHIC  REPRESENTATION  OF  THE  PER  CENT  OF  TRUANTS  IN  EACH  OF  THE  SEX 
GROUPS    THAT     COME    FROM    ECONOMICALLY    COMPLETE    OR    INCOMPLETE 

FAMILIES 


GROUP 

Girls 

East  Side  Boys 

West  Side  Boys 

TOTAL 


COMPLETE 


There  are  54  cases,  or  74  per  cent,  of  the  mentally  normal  truants 
who  come  from  incomplete  economic  families.  It  is  necessary 
to  treat  the  West  Side  and  East  Side  quite  separately  under  this 
topic  as  the  types  of  broken  homes  are  very  different  in  both 
cause  and  effect. 

20 


21 

The  East  Side  boys  who  come  from  incomplete  families  are 
no  such  problem  as  the  West  Side  boys.  In  the  first  place,  the 
proportion  of  such  boys  is  small.  Besides  this,  most  of  the 
East  Side  mothers  who  work  are  simply  assisting  their  husbands 
in  the  little  family  shop  or  are  janitresses  of  the  house  where  the 
family  lives.  In  none  of  the  East  Side  families  was  the  mother 
absent  from  morning  till  night.  These  mothers  do  not  often 
work  outside  their  homes.  Of  the  8  cases  of  incomplete  families, 
5  mothers  were  working.  Four  were  helping  their  husbands, 
one  was  a  janitress,  and  three  were  economically  incomplete 
because  the  father  was  out  of  work.  The  effect  upon  school 
attendance  in  these  cases  was  almost  entirely  the  result  of  the 
family's  dependence  upon  the  boy  as  an  economic  factor.  In 
the  small  shop  where  the  mother  works  there  is  almost  always 
work  for  the  boy  also.  It  becomes  a  temptation  to  a  parent  to 
keep  a  boy  at  home  to  ''help  out"  occasionally.  They  are  then 
surprised  and  often  grieved  to  discover  that  the  boy  has  failed 
to  attend  when  he  has  been  sent.  The  janitress  needed  her  boy 
to  help  her  clean  house,  especially  if  she  was  sick  or  pressed  by 
any  other  family  emergency.  In  two  cases  where  the  father 
was  out  of  employment, the  boy  had  been  sent  out  to  earn  ille- 
gally until  the  father  should  get  a  job.  In  nearly  all  these  cases 
the  truancy  was  temporary  and  had  shown  a  decided  improve- 
ment before  the  study  was  completed. 

The  forty  West  Side  cases,  on  the  other  hand,  were  of  a  far 
more  serious  nature,  and,  are  therefore  considered  more  at  length 
under  the  following  heads : 

TRUANTS  WHO  HAVE  NO  MOTHERS 

There  are  6  boys  coming  from  homes  where  the  mother  is 
dead  and  not  replaced  by  a  step-mother.  The  story  of  each  of 
these  boys  is  different,  and  yet  in  each  one  truancy  seems  not 
only  the  natural  but  the  inevitable  result  of  his  mode  of  life. 
Perhaps  there  is  nothing  more  pathetic  on  all  the  West  Side  than 
the  boy  without  a  mother. 

Paul's  father  lives  in  a  lodging  house  and  can  never  be  found 
when  wanted.  Paul  sees  him  every  year  or  so.  In  the  meantime, 
Paul  himself  is  passed  around  from  one  married  sister  to  the 
other,  each  grudging  him  the  food  he  eats  and  the  clothes  he 
wears.  Every  time  he  changes  his  home,  which  may  be  every 
few  months  or  every  few  weeks  as  he  has  a  circuit  of  four,  he  also 


22 

changes  his  school.  This  it  can  readily  be  seen  does  not  make 
for  regular  school  attendance.  All  his  habits  are  equally  ir- 
regular, as  would  naturally  be  the  case  under  his  shifting  environ- 
ment. The  life  of  a  commercial  traveller  for  a  boy  of  fourteen 
is  not  educational. 

Walter's  shifting  about  is  on  a  still  shorter  meter.  He  lives 
with  a  lady  whom,  he  explains,  his  father  "was  going  to  marry 
but  isn't."  She  works  away  from  home,  starting  at  6  A.  M.  every 
day.  Walter  is  called  at  school  time  by  a  neighbor  when  he  is 
not  forgotten.  He  has  dinner  at  noon  with  an  aunt  and  supper 
at  night  with  his  father.  After  this  he  returns  home  at  whatever 
hour  he  pleases.  The  necessity  of  keeping  all  these  engagements 
every  day  would,  it  might  seem,  make  him  efficient  in  remember- 
ing school  at  9  o'clock  each  morning.  And  indeed  Walter  is  not 
one  of  those  boys  who  forget  to  go  to  school  after  they  are  started 
from  home.  Walter  suffers  from  division  of  authority.  No  one 
knows  where  he  is  at  any  time  /except  when  he  chooses  to  turn 
up.  He  always  turns  up  for  meals  but  he  does  not  turn  up  for 
school.  Flying  pigeons  is  more  to  his  taste  and  in  this  occupa- 
tion he  spends  his  school  hours. 

John  is  thirteen  years  old.  His  mother  died  when  he  was  ten 
and  he  lived  with  his  father,  sister,  and  little  brother  for  a  while ; 
but  his  father  took  in  another  woman  and  John  took  his  little 
brother  and  walked  out.  "I  wouldn't  stand  for  that,"  he  said. 
He  had  a  grandmother  who  was  very  old  and  whose  rent  was 
paid  by  the  church.  He  went  to  her  and  offered  to  support 
himself  and  brother  if  she  would  shelter  them.  He  has  sold 
papers  at  the  Times  Square  subway  station  for  two  years  and 
supported  himself  and  Tommy.  While  getting  started  in  busi- 
ness he  accidentally  contracted  the  habit  of  truancy  and  served 
a  few  months'  term  in  a  truant  school.  "  I  never  stay  out  now, " 
he  explained,  "except  on  business."  When  this  gets  to  be  too 
often  John's  name  appears  on  the  truant  list  and  he  returns  hot- 
foot to  school.  His  responsibilities  are  too  great  for  him  to  take 
any  chances  on  getting  "sent  up"  again. 

The  only  reason  that  Jimmy  doesn't  go  to  school  is  because  his 
home  is  so  bad  he  wants  to  get  sent  away.  His  drunken  old 
grandmother  disgusts  him  and  his  equally  drunken  father  beats 
him.  He  loves  his  school  and  his  teacher  but  he  has  long  cherished 
the  hope  of  being  sent  where  school  lasts  twenty-four  hours  a  day 
and  home  does  not  exist.  Through  the  perversity  of  human 


23 

affairs,  this  has  not  happened  to  Jimmy.  He  is  now  sixteen  and 
has  tuberculosis.  "If  I  can  just  get  well,"  he  says,  "I'll  go  to 
work  now  and  buy  myself  a  good  home." 

These  are  the  stories  of  four  boys  who  have  no  mothers. 
The  other  two  are  cases  of  no  home  control,  the  father  forgetting 
his  home  ties  when  there  is  no  one  to  cook  for  him  and  the  boys 
shifting  for  themselves  for  food  and  education  which  they  find 
outside  of  school. 

TRUANTS  WHOSE  MOTHERS  ARE  WIDOWS 

The  second  group  includes  16  boys  whose  mothers  were 
widows.  In  most  of  these  families,  unless  an  older  brother  or 
sister  is  working,  a  charitable  society  or  the  church  is  paying  the 
rent  or  assisting  in  some  other  way.  It  would  seem  that  a 
more  efficient  means  than  the  present  one  might  be  devised  of 
assisting  these  families  where  the  mother  and  children  are  of 
normal  mentality  and  the  children  could  grow  into  normal  effi- 
ciency if  for  a  few  years  they  were  tided  over  economically. 
Possibly  a  widow's  pension  system  would  suffice  to  carry  many 
families  over  this  difficult  period  when  the  home  does  not  func- 
tion as  a  moralizing  influence.  It  is  not  only  the  little  children 
who  need  the  care  and  training  of  a  mother  but  the  half-grown 
boy  who  is  just  beginning  to  be  wild  cannot  be  left  to  his  own 
devices  and  neighborhood  influences  without  suffering  irreparable 
injury.  Truancy  is  only  the  first  step  with  these  boys.  What 
they  do  during  the  hours  when  they  should  be  in  school  is  more 
pernicious  in  a  positive  way  than  the  failure  to  get  an  education 
is  in  a  negative  one. 

Even  when  cared  for  economically,  many  boys  would  be  more 
than  a  handful  for  a  home  withont  a  father  to  control  and  disci- 
pline in  the  face  of  demoralizing  neighborhood  influences.  Boys 
of  this  age  are  universally  acknowledged  to  be  so  difficult  to 
manage  that  in  the  families  of  the  well  to  do,  where  home  in- 
fluences are  good,  boarding  schools  are  usually  considered  the 
best  solution  for  the  boy  who  is  a  problem.  Why  would  not  a 
boarding  school  be  equally  good  for  the  difficult  boy  with  a  broken 
home?  Among  the  poor  a  good  boarding  school  is  possible  only 
for  the  confirmed  truant.  Here  he  may  stay  only  until  he  begins 
to  improve.  At  that  unpsychological  moment  he  is  removed 
from  the  favorable  environment  under  which  he  has  gained  and 
returned  to  the  unfavorable  environment  under  which  he  had 


24 

already  deteriorated.  He  must  make  room  for  the  next  boy 
who  has  overstepped  the  bounds  of  social  endurance.  The  per 
capita  cost  of  a'  boarding  school  education  at  the  New  York 
Parental  School  is  $2.10  a  week.  This  is  always  at  public  ex- 
pense. For  a  boy  to  be  sent  there  is  a  social  stigma.  If  the 
Board  of  Education  could  offer  this  opportunity  to  the  boy  who 
is  not  yet  bad  or  who  has  just  begun  to  be  "wild, "  there  is  many 
a  mother  on  the  West  Side  who  would  scrub  her  knuckles  bare 
rather  than  have  her  boy  "go  to  the  bad."  If  a  boarding  school 
ceased  to  be  a  reformatory  and  a  boy  could  be  sent  at  the  parent's 
request  instead  of  on  a  court  commitment  there  is  scarcely  one 
of  the  29  boys  in  these  two  groups  who  would  not  have  been 
saved  from  the  r61e  of  confirmed  truant  that  he  now  plays.  For 
few  of  these  mothers  who  are  working  so  hard  for  the  physical 
welfare  of  their  children  were  indifferent  to  their  moral  welfare 
but  were  helpless  in  the  face  of  neighborhood  conditions  and 
economic  necessity. 

A  number  of  them  preferred  the  truant  school  with  all  its 
stigma  to  the  deteriorating  influence  of  continued  truancy.  "I 
didn't  send  him  to  school  this  morning,"  Mrs.  Gilligan  said. 

"Mr.  B was  here  yesterday  and  said  if  he  wasn't  in  school 

today,  he'd  send  him  up  to  Flushing,  sure  thing,  and  it's  better 
so.  I  have  to  work  out  more  days  than  not  and  it's  no  use  me 
to  promise  he'll  go  to  school,  for  he  won't.  He  was  up  there  once 
and  we  was  both  well  satisfied.  I  only  hope  he'll  find  him  on  the 
street."  By  such  means  only  can  Mrs.  Gilligan  and  her  neigh- 
bors get  a  proper  education  for  their  boys. 

TRUANTS  WHOSE  PARENTS  BOTH  WORK 

There  are  13  families  where  both  parents  are  living  and 
both  working,  leaving  no  one  at  home.  Most  of  the  boys  from 
these  homes  belong  to  the  type  called  "wild."  Not  only  do  they 
suffer  from  the  lack  of  some  one  to  get  them  up,  dress  and  feed 
them,  and  send  them  to  school  but  most  of  them  have  behind 
them  a  long  history  of  years  during  which  the  street  has  been 
their  home  and  the  gang  their  club.  No  doubt  necessity  has 
pressed  these  mothers  to  leave  their  homes  and  go  into  industry 
but  the  fact  remains  that  their  boys  arg/but  little  better  off  than 
those  of  the  widows  who  are  the  sole  support  of  their  families. 


TRUANTS  WHO  HAVE  STEP-PARENTS 

There  are  the  homes  where  one  parent  is  a  step-parent. 
Five  of  the  40  West  Side  cases  now  under  consideration  are  of 
this  type.  Stories  of  step-parents  always  produced  the  fact  that 
discipline  is  lax  and  the  boy  is  allowed  to  do  as  he  pleases  because 
the  step-parent,  either  mother  or  father,  "doesn't  feel  like  hitting 
the  boy"  because  "you  know  how  the  neighbors  talk."  What- 
ever is  really  behind  this  step-parent  situation,  one  never  fails 
to  get  this  same  story.  One  begins  to  suspect  that  to  have  a 
step-father  or  step-mother  on  the  West  Side  is  the  signal  for  a 
boy  to  go  on  the  loose.  The  own  parent  in  such  a  family  is 
equally  often  accused  of  being  overlenient  and  so  we  have  a  situa- 
tion in  which  no  discipline  is  expected.  An  added  difficulty  in 
getting  co-operation  in  school  attendance  is  that  the  step-parent 
is  often  quite  willing,  if  not  eager,  that  the  "wild  boy"  shall  be 
sent  to  truant  school,  and  therefore  assumes  the  r61e  of  inade- 
quate guardian. 

TRUANTS  FROM  COMPLETE  ECONOMIC  FAMILIES 
Of  the  9  West  Side  boys  who  come  from  complete  economic 
families,  very  different  stories  may  be  told.  In  the  first  place, 
five  of  these  boys  were  distinctly  candidates  for  a  truant  school 
of  the  existing  type.  Three  have  been  there  once  arid  all  but 
one  have  brothers  there  now.  They  come  from  families  of  a  low 
mental  type  and  still  lower  moral  tone.  Three  of  them  are  normal 
members  of  feeble-minded  families  and  should  be  given  a  chance 
in  a  favorable  environment. 

In  the  second  place  four  of  these  nine  have  ceased  to  be  truants 
during  the  course  of  this  study.  Their  reasons  for  non-attend- 
ance were  specific  and  temporary  and  not  difficult  to  overcome. 
One  of  them  was  persuaded  by  a  trip  to  a  trade  school  to  see 
what  was  in  store  for  him  if  he  would  show  a  good  record 
of  attendance  on  his  fourteenth  birthday.  He  had  acquired 
irregular  habits  during  his  mother's  illness  and  needed  only  a 
slight  stimulus  to  make  him  take  hold  of  the  situation  himself. 

Another  boy  had  been  seized  with  a  desire  to  see  the  world  and 
for  a  short  period  had  been  going  every  morning  to  a  busy  sub- 
way station,  sneaking  in  with  the  crowd,  and  then  riding  up  and 
down  town  all  day — a  city  manifestation  of  the  old  fever  among 
boys  to  go  "railroading."  His  attendance  has  been  regular 


26 

for  a  number  of  months.  This  was  a  little  fellow  of  twelve  and 
he  has  apparently  for  the  present  settled  down.  He  has  a  good 
home  where  the  parents  will  probably  be  able  to  manage  any 
further  outcropping  of  erratic  tendencies. 

It  was  another  of  this  group  who  was  the  only  one  of  all  the 
1 50  to  offer  a  definite  complaint  against  his  teacher  as  a  reason  for 
staying  out  of  school.  "  I  wouldn't  come, "  he  said,  "when  I  had 
a  fresh  teacher.  She  don't  hit  you  when  you're  really  bad,  but 
when  you're  just  stubborn,  she  beats  you.  Now  I'm  promoted, 
I'll  come  every  day,"  and  he  did. 

Another  of  this  group  explained.  "I  used  to  stay  out  a  lot 
until  the  Troonty'  come  to  our  house.  I  didn't  suppose  it  was 
any  harm."  Since  the  visit  of  the  "Troonty,"  this  boy  stays 
out  from  time  to  time  but  is  not  a  confirmed  truant  and  will 
probably  survive  without  a  trip  to  the  truant  school. 

These  four  cases  together  with  five  similar  ones  on  the  East 
Side  are  the  only  cases  of  truancy  in  the  whole  study  that  seem 
to  be  capable  of  being  finally  dealt  with  under  the  present  un- 
analytical  method.  The  attendance  officer  has  brought  these 
boys  back  to  school  to  stay  and  can  always  bring  others  like 
them.  He  was  dealing  with  normal,  rational  human  beings  and 
had  the  co-operation  of  normal  and  adequate  homes.  Where 
the  boys  are  feeble-minded  the  attendance  officer  cannot  make 
them  normal  and  where  the  home  does  not  function,  he  cannot 
remake  the  structure  of  society.  Ideally,  all  the  feeble-minded 
would  go  to  institutions  for  their  permanent  care,  but  in  the 
meantime  they  must  be  taken  care  of  in  ungraded  classes.  The 
boys  with  homes  which  do  not  function  as  a  supplement  to  school 
in  their  education  should  go  to  24  hour  a  day  schools  with  no 
stigma  attached  and  should  stay  there  until  the  home  is  changed 
or  until  the  boy's  education  is  completed.  The  present  system 
of  sending  boys  to  the  truant  school  after  the  mischief  is  done 
and  sending  them  back  to  the  environment  that  demoralized 
them  with  still  unformed  characters  is  not  only  futile  but  econom- 
ically wasteful.  The  average  term  of  9  months  in  a  truant  school 
is  manifestly  insufficient  for  an  entire  education  to  say  nothing 
of  re-education. 

The  essential  difference  between  the  kinds  of  causes  of  non- 
attendance  among  the  girls  and  the  boys,  considering  now  only 
the  group  of  mentally  normal  of  both  sexes,  is  that  the  girls  were 
almost  without  exception  kept  home  to  work  and  would  rather 


27 

have  been  in  school,  while  the  boys  as  a  rule  were  not  working 
but  were  out  of  school  by  their  own  volition.  The  stories  of  the 
girls  were  monotonously  alike:  "My  mother  works  and  I  must 
mind  the  baby  and  Eddie  and  Joey  and  clean  the  house.  My 
papa  is  in  the  hospital  five  months  now,  so  my  mama  has  to  work. 
She  goes  at  seven  and  don't  come  back  till  night,  so  what  can 
I  do?"  Or  the  mother's  stories  offer  no  more  variety.  "  I  can't 
get  her  off  to  school  on  time.  I  do  office  cleaning  and  I  don't 
get  home  till  half  past  nine,  do  my  best,  and  she  can't  leave  the 
children  till  I  come  and  she  can't  go  every  day  late,  so  what  can 
I  do?"  Or  the  father's  story  is,  "My  wife  is  dead  three  months 
and  who  can  look  after  the  house  and  the  little  children  while 
I  earn  their  bread?  I  have  to  go  to  work.  Nellie's  almost  fifteen 
and  if  she'd  been  promoted  she'd  have  had  her  working  papers 
by  now,  but  I  couldn't  send  her  last  term ;  how  could  I  with  her 
mother  sick  abed  and  three  children,  so  what  can  I  do?"  The 
stories  of  all  but  three  of  the  normal  cases  were  of  this  type, 
economically  incomplete  families  and  the  burden  falling  on  the 
girl. 

Two  of  the  remaining  cases  were  normal  members  of  feeble- 
minded shiftless  families,  where  truancy  was  a  family  habit, 
both  of  them  having  brothers  and  sisters  included  in  the  present 
study.  They  are  good  examples  of  the  unfortunate  fact  that 
the  normal  members  of  such  families  jire  more  apt  to  be  pulled 
down  to  the  habit  level  of  the  incompetent  members  than  to 
help  to  pull  up  to  a  normal  level  the  low  general  average  of  the 
family. 

Under  this  heading  also  belong  the  two  girls  of  doubtful  men- 
tality. Poor  intellectually  befogged  creatures  were  these  two, 
struggling  against  the  odds  of  a  feeble-minded,  inefficient  clan. 
In  a  stimulating  environment,  doubtless  both  of  these  girls  would 
have  pulled  through  on  school.  As  it  is,  one  of  them,  whose  defi- 
nition of  "on  the  hook"  was  "going  on  the  street,"  is  now  at 
Hope  Farm  and  the  other  is  in  the  process  of  being  committed 
to  some  protecting  institution.  Both  of  them  were  docile  girls, 
instinctively  good  but  easily  led.  Decent  homes  would  have 
saved  them. 

The  one  remaining  case  is  that  of  a  normal  girl  who  seems  to 
"go  on  the  hook"  as  the  boys  do.  She  has  a  gang  most  of  whom 
have  left  school  but  are  not  yet  working.  She  goes  to  school 
"when  she's  chased"  and  the  rest  of  the  time  the  streets  and  the 


28 

"movies"  and  the  Tenth  Avenue  shops  are  more  to  her  liking. 
A  toss  of  the  head  and  just  a  touch  of  defiance  in  her  tone  toward 
school  teachers  indicated  that  she  considered  a  distaste  for  school 
not  a  thing  that  had  to  be  justified.  Her  mother's  attitude  was 
not  unsimilar.  This  seemed  to  be  the  only  case  among  the  girls 
where  a  truant  school  would  have  been  the  only  solution. 


COMPARISON  BETWEEN  NUMBER  OF  TRUANTS  AND  NON-TRUANTS 

FROM  INCOMPLETE  ECONOMIC  FAMILIES 

In  order  to  discover  whether  the  proportion  of  incomplete  to 
complete  economic  families  among  the  families  of  truants  was 
great  in  comparison  with  the  proportion  in  the  neighborhood  at 
large,  a  census  was  taken  in  one  school  of  341  children  in  grades 
corresponding  to  those  in  which  most  of  the  truancy  occurred, 
namely,  the  5th  and  6th.  Table  IV  shows  that,  whereas  only 

TABLE  IV. — NUMBER  AND  PER  CENT  OF  TRUANTS  AND  NON- 
TRUANTS  COMING  FROM  COMPLETE  AND  INCOMPLETE  ECONOMIC 

FAMILIES 


Group 

Coming  from 
complete 
economic 
families 

Coming  from 
incomplete 
economic 
families 

Total 

Num- 
ber 

Per 
cent 

Num- 
ber 

Per 
cent 

Num- 
ber 

Per 
cent 

West  Side  Truants  

9 

178 

18.00 
52.40 

41 
163 

82.00 
47.60 

50 
341 

IOO 
IOO 

West  Side  Non-truants  .  . 

GRAPHIC  REPRESENTATION  OF  THE  PER  CENT  OF  TRUANTS  AND   NON-TRUANTS 
THAT    COME    FROM    ECONOMICALLY    COMPLETE    OR    INCOMPLETE    FAMILIES 


CROP? 

West  Side  Truants 
West  Side  Non-Truants 


COMPLETE 


INCOMPLETE 


1 8  per  cent  of  the  mentally  normal  boys  who  were  truants  come 
from  complete  economic  families,  52  per  cent  of  the  non-truants 
of  corresponding  grades  come  from  complete  economic  families; 
that  82  per  cent  of  the  truants  in  contrast  to  48  per  cent  of  the 
non- truants  come  from  incomplete  homes.  Even  though  the 
proportion  of  incomplete  families  in  the  neighborhood  is  ap- 
pallingly large  (48%),  the  number  of  truants  having  incomplete 
families  is  vastly  larger  (82%). 


29 

The  question  occurs  of  course,  why,  if  the  incomplete  family 
is  the  cause  of  truancy  in  82  per  cent  of  the  cases  of  truants,  are 
not  the  48  per  cent  of  all  the  boys  in  the  corresponding  grades 
also  truants.  In  the  first  place,  the  fact  that  the  family  is  in- 
complete is  probably  in  most  cases  not  the  only  cause.  It  is 
most  often  the  negative  cause,  in  that,  if  any  other  individual 
reason  for  truancy  exists  which  it  is  the  function  of  the  home  to 
counteract,  the  incomplete  home  fails  to  perform  this  function. 
Also  truancy  is  not  the  only  one  and  perhaps  not  the  most  viru- 
lent symptom  of  the  incomplete  home.  Court  records  show  an 
abnormally  large  proportion  of  broken  families  among  children 
arrested.  There  is  small  doubt  that  any  study  of  malnutrition 
or  of  scholarship  in  these  same  grades  would  also  show  the  effect 
on  large  numbers  of  the  48  per  cent  who  were  suffering  from  the 
lack  of  the  moralizing  and  normalizing  of  a  complete  home. 

To  repeat,  nothing  can  bring  these  adolescent  boys  into  line 
for  normal  and  useful  citizenship  except  sfome  means  of  raising 
the  standard  of  the  home  to  the  point  where  it  will  contribute 
that  part  of  their  education  which  it  is  not  now  the  function  of 
the  school  to  contribute,  or  of  supplying  a  24  hour  school  to 
which  boys  may  be  sent  at  cost  price,  even  if  necessary  at  the 
expense  of  the  state,  before  they  have  become  an  unsolvable 
problem  and  where  they  may  be  kept  until  they  have  attained 
that  degree  of  training  and  education  that  can  resist  the  vitiat- 
ing influence  of  a  neighborhood  without  ambition  and  without 
ideals. 


III.     PHYSICAL  FITNESS  OF  TRUANTS 


The  original  plan  in  this  phase  of  the  study  was  to  give  each 
truant  a  thorough  physical  examination,  with  the  hope  of  having 
every  physical  defect  immediately  corrected,  leaving  the  balance 
of  the  school  year  free  for  observing  the  effect  on  the  truant  of  his 
improved  physical  condition.  But  unexpected  difficulties  arose. 
Clinic  was  on  Monday.  A  truant  despises  school  on  Monday. 
However  44  were  taken  to  clinics  after  school  hours  and  had  a 
thorough  examination,  and  8  others  were  taken  to  specialists 
for  their  various  defects. 

The  second  revelation  was  in  the  attempt  to  get  the  physical 
defects  corrected ;  a  truant  has  no  more  appreciation  of  the  bene- 
fits of  medical  treatment  than  he  has  of  the  benefits  of  education. 
Added  to  this  was  the  fear  that  many  children  have  of  the  doctor 
and  the  hospital,  and  fear  is  a  trait  over-developed  in  the  average 
truant.  He^has  the  habit  of  running  away,  of  mistrusting  anyone 
proposing  to  take  him  anywhere, — having  in  mind  the  oft- 
threatened  trip  to  the  Truant  School, — the  fear  that  he  will  not 
be  brought  back;  that  the  treatment  or  the  doctor  will  hurt  him. 
All  these  have  to  be  overcome.  Then  he  tells  you  that  he  "  isn't 
sick  anyway,"  that  he  "must  help  his  mother"  or  "get  wood," 
or  even  that  he  will  miss  a  good  time  with  the  boys  if  he  goes.  A 
boy  who  is  seldom  at  school  is  less  often  found  at  home,  so  that 
careful  and  patient  angling  is  required  until  he  is  landed. 

The  following  is  the  result  of  the  physical  examination  of  44 
cases : 


Boys, 

1 
36 

Girls,  8 

No. 
found 

No.  treated  and  re- 
marks 

No. 
found 

No.  treated  and  re- 
marks 

Condition: 
Poor  

4 

10.  To  go  to  country 

I 

1.  1  2  tonic;  2  to  go 

Fair  

8 

in  vacation. 

7 

>  to     country     in 
3.  J    vacation. 

Good  

15 

2 

Undeveloped  .... 
Undernourished    . 
Rachitic  

6 
6 

2 

I 
I 

Displaced  hip. 

Anemic  

4 

4.  Tonic  given. 

I 

I.  Tonic. 

Heart  

0 

0 

30 


No. 
found 

No.  treated  and  re- 
marks 

No. 
found 

No.  treated  and  re- 
marks 

Lungs  

2 

Observed  :     nega- 

i 

I    T   B  glands 

Bronchitis    .  . 

2 

•2 

tive. 
Sputum         tests 
negative. 
*. 

i 

i 

Rhinitis  

3 

3- 

I 

Adenoids         and 
tonsils 

14. 

8.  Operated  on 

•i 

I.  To  be  done  July 
15*     2    not    in 

Enlarged  glands  .  . 

7 

No  operation 
needed. 

2 

condition       for 
operation. 
No        operation 
needed. 

Digestion  —  fair  or 
bad 

10 

10.  Medicine  given. 

4. 

4.  Medicine  given. 
4    Diet  ordered 

Constipation  

n 

8. 
ii.  Medicine,       diet 

and  exercises. 

Teeth  defective  .  . 
Palate  defective.  . 

27 

2 

12.  Treatment  started 
at  clinic. 
Parents     are     to 
take  to  dentist. 

6 

4.  Treatment  start- 
ed at  clinic. 

Eyes: 
Vision  defective 

Strabismus  .... 
Trachoma  

4 

4 
i 

3.  Procured  glasses. 
I.  Had    glasses.     3 
doubtful      cases 
removed           to 
Truant  School. 
I.  Operated  on. 
2.  Procured  glasses. 
I.  Not  serious. 

2 

2.  Procured  glasses. 

Conjunctivitis  . 
Keratitis  

3 

3.  Examined;       not 
serious. 

I 

i. 

Ears: 
Hearing  

o 

0 

Wax  

10 

I.           .... 

I 

I. 

Pediculosis  

3 

3- 

.  . 

Curvature  

4. 

2.  Had  accident. 

I 

Postural  (syphil- 

2.  Were  eye  cases. 

itic). 

Flatfoot  

6 

Exercises        sug- 

2 

Beginning. 

gested. 

Circumcision: 
Urgent  

10 

5.  Operated  on. 

Advised  

5 

3.  Operated  on. 

i.  Parents    to    have 
done. 



Syphilis  

i 

I. 

I 

i. 

Wassermann 
taken  

i 

Negative. 

I 

Positive. 

Hernia  

i 

Urine: 
Analysis  

i 

I.  Elimination       of 
albumen.      Diet 
ordered. 

•• 



32 

After  the  examination  the  parents  were  seen,  and  were  told 
what  were  the  doctor's  findings.  As  a  rule  parents  give  their 
consent  to  medical  treatment  and  even  to  operations  when  told 
the  need,  though  they  may  couple  with  their  consent  the  remark, 
"Yes,  take  him,  if  you  can  get  him  to  go.  I  can't";  or  "he 
won't  go,  he's  afraid  of  doctors."  However,  there  are  a  few 
cases  like  the  following  where  the  need  is  greatest  and  the  con- 
sent hardest  to  obtain.  The  boy's  examination  showed  elimina- 
tion of  albumen  through  the  urine,  hernia,  defective  vision  and 
teeth,  flatfoot  and  a  speech  defect  which  was  influenced  by  his 
impaired  nervous  condition.  He  received  medicine  and  a  diet 
was  ordered,  but  his  treatment  was  interrupted  by  a  sojourn  at 
the  truant  school.  On  his  return  his  mother  absolutely  refused 
to  have  anything  done,  saying  if  he  needed  these  things,  why 
weren't  they  done  at  the  truant  school? 

The  figures  in  the  above  table  were  compared  with  62  cases, 
not  truants,  which  were  referred  to  the  visiting  teacher  in  the 
same  neighborhood,  many  of  them  on  account  of  physical  dis- 
ability. These  children  had  the  same  physical  examination. 
The  results  of  the  comparison  were  as  follows: 


General  condition 

Per  cent  of 
truants 

Per  cent  of  vis- 
iting teach- 
ers' cases 

Good  

78  + 

17  + 

Fair  

25 

2O 

Undeveloped       1 
Undernourished  }• 

16  + 

61  + 

Anemic 
Adenoids  and  tonsils  needing  operation  
Intestinal  trouble  

38.6 

54.  e 

37 
52 

Defective  teeth  
Curvature 

75 

11  + 

85.5 

21 

Flatfoot  . 

18 

•72 

Eye  cases  were  not  compared  as  they  were  rated  differently. 

Although  the  averages  in  tonsil  and  adenoid  cases  and  intes- 
tinal disturbances  are  higher  in  the  truants  than  in  the  visiting 
teachers'  cases,  the  per  cent  of  those  in  good  condition  is  also 
higher;  and  of  defects  difficult  to  correct,  like  curvature  and 
flatfoot,  is  lower.  This  would  put  truants  not  in  the  list  of  sick 
children  but  of  those  needing  attention  to  remediable  defects. 


33 

A  sick  stomach  and  a  sick  headache  are  given  as  excuses  for 
absence  from  school.  A  toothache  figures  even  higher,  although 
all  who  complained  did  not  avail  themselves  of  the  opportunity 
to  have  dental  work  done. 

In  order  to  determine  whether  truants  have  more  defects  than 
the  average  school  child,  the  per  cents  from  the  examination  of 
school  children  in  New  York  City  in  1911  are  compared  with  the 
per  cents  for  truants : 


Defects 

Per  cent  of  school 
children 

Per  cent  of  truants 

Defective  teeth  

SQ.o 

7S.O 

Hypertrophied  tonsils  

IS.O 

74.0 

Defective  nasal  breathing  
Defective  vision  

11.9 
10.6 

36.0 

2O.O 

Malnutrition 

2  5 

136 

Orthopedic  defects 

c 

27.0  flatfoot 

Cardiac  disease  

.7 

and  curva- 
ture 

Pulmonary  disease  

.2 

Defective  hearing  

.6 

•• 

The  above  figures  for  school  children  are  taken  from  "Medical 
Inspection  of  Schools"  by  Gulick  and  Ayres.  In  both  instances 
only  those  cases  needing  attention  are  considered.  The  high  per 
cents  of  truants  would  indicate  their  special  need  of  attention, 
yet  several  had  had  no  medical  inspection  in  the  school  or  no 
recent  inspection,  their  frequent  absences  probably  making  it 
possible  for  them  to  escape  notice. 

In  the  following  cases  the  physical  defects  are  a  handicap  to 
education,  and  may  have  been  the  original  cause  of  the  truant 
habit: 

A  boy  of  14  in  a  36  grade  could  not  see  to  read,  and  had  to 
change  his  seat  in  the  classroom  in  order  to  see  the  blackboard. 
Some  months  previously  an  optician  had  fitted  both  eyes  with  a 
-j-i  sphere.  This  winter  the  oculist's  examination  under  atropin 
revealed  hyperopia  with  very  high  astigmatism.  In  January 
the  boy  was  fitted  with  strong  lenses,  but  even  with  these  did 
not  have  normal  vision.  He  wore  them  during  the  first  few 
weeks  of  the  new  term.  After  that  his  attendance  became  rare 
and  finally  ceased  altogether,  the  boy  having  apparently  dis- 
appeared. It  turned  out  later  that  he  had  gone  to  work;  the 
3 


34 

glasses  were  forgotten.  Had  they  come  into  his  life  eight  years 
earlier  perhaps  they  would  have  helped  to  keep  alive  his  interest 
in  school  work.  All  his  family  were  truants.  He  has  a  normal 
mentality,  and  alcoholic  parents,  and  the  necessity  of  work  prob- 
ably forced  itself  upon  him.  That  earlier  corrected  vision  might 
have  saved  him  is  inferred  from  comparing  the  case  of  a  6-year-old 
boy,  the  youngest  of  a  family  of  truants,  who  "hated  school" 
and  who  was  fitted  with  glasses  this  spring.  He  has  improved 
in  his  lessons  and  attends  regularly,  and  his  strabismus  is  being 
corrected  with  improving  vision. 

A  girl  of  13  suffering  from  keratitis  was  unable  to  attend  school. 
She  was  put  under  treatment  for  this  and  for  hereditary  syphilis. 
It  is  not  probable  that  she  will  ever  get  much  from  schooling 
unless  placed — when  she  is  in  condition  for  it — in  a  blind  class. 
While  she  delights  in  reading — against  the  doctor's  orders — 
and  interests  herself  in  all  that  is  going  on  about  her,  she  shows 
no  ambition  to  take  her  place  again  in  the  classroom. 

The  following  8  cases  all  received  special  medical  treatment  for 
certain  defects,  but  are  not  included  in  the  above  list  of  44  as 
they  did  not  have  a  domplete  examination: 

E.  S.  is  a  mental  defective,  undersized  and  undeveloped.  She 
has  evaded  school  for  nearly  two  years.  She  was  found  to  have 
tuberculosis  and  has  been  placed  under  treatment. 

N.  R.  is  one  of  the  slippery  youths  who  was  never  where  one 
could  lay  one's  hands  on  him  when  wanted  for  a  medical  exam- 
ination. However,  when  finally  apprehended  he  was  found  to 
show  signs  of  rickets  and  marasmus  in  infancy;  general  nervous 
debility,  some  defective  teeth,  and  trachoma.  For  the  latter 
ailment  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children 
have  brought  the  reluctant  parents  to  an  understanding  of  their 
duty,  and  the  boy  was  placed  in  a  hospital  for  operation.  He  is 
said  to  be  word-blind.  It  remains  to  be  seen  what  effect  the 
treatment  will  have  on  his  scholarship. 

A.  R.  has  tubercular  glands  on  the  neck.  These  furnished  an 
excellent  excuse  for  non-attendance;  she  "must  go  to  the  hos- 
pital." As  a  matter  of  fact  she  went  twice,  tearing  off  the  band- 
ages and  washing  away  the  applications  as  soon  as  she  came  out. 
She  is  now  enjoying  the  hospitality  of  Randall's  Island  and  is 
much  improved  in  health. 

S.  Y.  had  a  Wasserman  test,  which  was  negative.  His  eyes 
were  examined  and  glasses  procured,  and  he  wears  them  only 
under  compulsion.  His  teeth  were  in  bad  condition,  10  or  more 
needing  treatment  and  filling.  He  is  now  attending  a  dental 
clinic  weekly. 

L.  R.  has  a  psychopathic  constitution  and  a  bad  heredity. 


35 

He  was  the  first  child  of  very  youthful  parents.  He  attends 
school  only  when  his  mother  brings  him  to  each  session.  His 
physical  examination  showed  no  stigmata,  but  a  fine,  rapid 
tremor,  enhanced  by  excessive  cigarette  smoking.  He  suffers 
from  enuresis  day  and  night,  and  received  medical  treatment  for 
this.  He  is  mentally  backward,  of  limited  memory  and  asso- 
ciative powers,  and  learns  little  during  his  scanty  school  attend- 
ance. 

E.  H.  has  such  a  weak  heart  that  after  an  attempt  to  return 
to  school  she  collapsed,  and  was  sent  to  a  hospital. 

N.  Y.  has  had  several  falls.  He  is  mentally  defective,  and 
children  of  his  limited  mentality  seem  to  be  prone  to  falls.  He 
was  examined  for  a  nasal  obstruction.  The  septum  was  deflected 
almost  obstructing  one  nostril,  but  on  account  of  his  youth, 
operation  was  deferred.  He  has,  however,  been  faithful  in 
attending  dental  clinic,  and  had  all  but  one  of  his  defective  teeth 
filled  when  clinic  closed  for  the  summer. 

J.  S.  has  spent  the  majority  of  his  ten  years  within  an  institu- 
tion. His  home  conditions  are  not  conducive  to  leading  him 
to  establish  regular  habits  of  living,  and  his  three  months  of 
"home  life"  this  winter  resulted  in  about  nine  days  of  school  and 
other  days  and  nights  on  the  street.  His  mentality  is  normal, 
personality  attractive,  even  lovable,  though  his  temper  at  times 
is  phenomenally  bad.  He  was  found  to  have  insufficient  food, 
constipation,  enuresis,  adherent  foreskin,  and  caries.  His  eyes 
were  to  be  examined,  but  his  too  speedy  return  to  an  institution 
interfered.  Two  and  a  half  months  after  his  return  to  an  institu- 
tion he  was  so  improved  in  every  way  that  his  mental  examina- 
tion showed  a  year's  gain.  His  great  need  is  a  good  home  to 
return  to.  His  scornful  retort  when  he  learned  that  institutional 
life  again  threatened  him  was  apropos.  "Put  me  in  an  institu- 
tion! Put  me  in  an  institution !  Put  mamma  in  an  institution !" 

During  the  term  five  of  the  children  examined  were  transferred 
to  Truant  Schools  and  two  were  placed  in  other  institutions. 
Three  moved  out  of  the  neighborhood.  Several  of  these  had  had 
some  work  done  but  in  none  was  the  treatment  completed.  Two 
later  received  treatment  through  the  institutions.  Other  impedi- 
ments to  getting  the  work  done  are  in  the  child  himself.  His 
equivalent  for  a  tonsil  operation  is  "having  his  throat  cut,"  and 
two  boys  who  had  gone  smiling  to  the  hospital  fought  their 
way  out  before  the  nurses  had  them  prepared  for  operation. 

The  dental  situation  is  bad.  Many  have  10  or  12  teeth  need- 
ing treatment,  filling,  or  extraction  and  not  one  of  those  started 
at  the  dental  clinic  has  come  quite  often  enough  to  have  the  work 


36 

completed.  One  small  boy's  excuse  for  failing  to  keep  his 
appointment  was  "Oh,  I  had  a  toothache!"  When  one  remem- 
bers how  many  teeth  he  has  needing  attention,  and  neglected  for 
ten  or  fourteen  years  and  needing  to  be  filled  or  treated  one  at  a 
time  at  a  free  clinic  on  a  Saturday  afternoon — as  dear  to  the 
heart  of  a  truant  as  to  the  child  who  is  regular — who  can  blame 
him?  The  dentists  were  especially  kind,  and,  however  busy, 
gave  attention  to  each  one,  but  this  type  of  child  needs  to  be 
educated  to  the  advantages  of  dental  treatment.  His  father 
and  his  father's  father  and  all  his  truant  brothers  and  sisters 
got  along  without  a  dentist.  "Oh  no,"  replied  a  handsome 
Italian  boy  suffering  from  toothache,  "I  don't  want  to  go  to  a 
dentist,  why  sometimes  they  kill  the  nerve!" 

The  possessor  of  a  newly  fitted  pair  of  spectacles  walks  off 
proudly  wearing  them.  A  few  weeks  later  an  inquiry  as  to  their 
whereabouts  brings  the  answer,  "I  don't  wear  them  because  the 
boys  called  me  'cock-eye'  or  'four-eyes.' "  A  truant  girl  with 
but  f-§-  vision  procured  glasses,  and  wore  them  faithfully  for  the 
last  six  weeks  of  school.  She  appeared  to  be,  at  that  time,  a 
phenomenal  success  in  every  way.  Some  time  later,  however, 
her  mother  remarked,  "Sure,  what  good  do  they  do  her,  they're 
on  the  shelf."  Teachers  when  they  have  been  interviewed  have 
gladly  co-operated  and  seen  that  the  child  wore  his  glasses.  This 
seems  to  be  one  of  the  best  ways  to  establish  the  habit  in  the 
child.  Those  of  the  cases  who  showed  defective  vision  were  in 
great  need  of  glasses,  and  early  attention  to  the  eyes  might  save 
many  days  of  wasted  non-attendance. 

The  impaired  digestion  presents  a  more  extensive  problem. 
The  large  percentage  of  cases  of  intestinal  disturbance  were  the 
most  hopeless,  partly  on  account  of  bad  teeth,  and  largely  on 
account  of  the  prevailing  diet.  A  diet  of  bread  and  tea,  the 
latter  strong  and  frequent,  makes  its  appeal  to  the  flat  pocket- 
books  of  these  families  as  well  as  to  their  tastes.  Then,  too,  it 
needs  no  preparation.  The  little  children  of  three  and  four  pour 
for  themselves  from  the  tea-pot  that  has  stood  for  hours.  One 
boy  even  rises  from  bed  at  night  to  have  his  tea.  Of  course  the 
penny  candy  and  ice-cream  sandwich  play  their  usual  part. 
The  breakfast  in  the  greater  number  of  cases  was  bread  and  tea 
or  coffee;  dinner,  soup  or  stew, — largely  potato, — bread  and 
tea;  for  supper,  "whatever  we  have  left."  And  what  do  you 
think  would  be  left  from  this  restricted  menu?  Vegetables  and 


37 

fruit  play  a  small  part  in  the  diet.  Eggs  are  used  or  not  accord- 
ing to  the  market  price.  Cereals  are  not  popular  nor  anything 
else  requiring  much  preparation.  Seldom  is  there  fresh  milk. 
At  noon  the  children  eat  hastily,  sitting  one  or  two  at  a  time 
while  the  mother  serves  standing.  Then  they  depart  ostensibly 
in  a  great  hurry  for  school !  The  evening  meal  is  a  movable  feast 
frequently  enjoyed  "when  we  come  in."  No  one  seems  to  take 
it  seriously  unless  there  is  a  father  regularly  employed  to  come 
home  at  a  regular  time.  The  Italians,  as  a  rule,  have  better 
fare. 

The  sleeping  conditions  are  as  follows: 

1 1  sleep  one  in  the  bed.  8  sleep  one  in  the  room. 

20  sleep  two  in  the  bed.  18  sleep  two  in  the  room. 

9  sleep  three  in  the  bed.  13  sleep  three  in  the  room. 

4  sleep  four  in  the  bed.  5  sleep  four  in  the  room. 

All  report  the  window  in  the  bedroom  open  in  warm  weather, 
29  have  it  open  all  winter. 

Fifteen  have  been  engaged  in  some  money-making  pursuit 
after  school  or  on  Saturdays.  This  does  not  include  those  who 
do  housework.  All  have  freedom  to  play  out  and  none  has  hard 
or  steady  work.  They  take  pride  in  the  money  they  earn  on 
Saturdays  with  the  peddler,  on  the  butcher  wagon,  or  deliver- 
ing goods. 

The  effect  on  attendance  of  three  complaints  is  vital.  With- 
out questioning  the  sincerity  of  the  excuses,  those  most  fre- 
quently offered  are,  toothache,  stomach-ache  and  "no  shoes." 
A/ew  days'  absence  leads  to  the  formation  of  a  habit,  and  even 
large  boys  dread  the  return  to  school.  The  first  cause  might  be 
eliminated  if  the  teeth  of  the  younger  children  (six  years  old) 
could  be  put  in  good  condition  and  kept  so  throughout  their 
school  term,  and  the  dreadful  results  of  neglect  seen  in  the  mouths 
of  the  older  boys  and  girls  be  done  away  with.  The  question  of 
diet  is  one  which  needs  to  be  agitated  among  both  parents  and 
children  and  one  which  lends  itself  to  education.  Their  ignor- 
ance along  this  line  is  apparent,  and  a  campaign  of  education 
would  probably  show  as  good  results  as  the  campaign  for  fresh 
air  has.  The  teacher  and  the  visiting  teacher  can  do  a  great 
deal  of  work  here  by  interesting  and  instructing  the  child  and  the 
parents.  The  "no  shoes"  condition  was  remedied  in  a  few  cases 
through  the  kindness  of  a  member  of  the  Local  School  Board  and 
others.  The  result  was  good  but  temporary,  for  a  second-hand 


38 

pair  of  shoes  lasts  but  a  short  time,  and  if  the  getting  of  shoes  is 
easy,  the  wearing  them  out  is  easier,  and  the  old  cry  is  heard 
again  in  a  few  days. 

The  benefits  of  the  operations  are  not  so  easily  undone.  Most 
of  the  operating  was  done  this  term,  and  it  is  too  soon  to  see  the 
effect  on  attendance  although  one  teacher  has  already  reported 
an  improvement  in  behavior.  It  would  be  most  interesting  to 
follow  these  children  to  the  completion  of  their  treatment  and 
to  note  their  attendance  during  the  next  few  terms.  Many  of 
them  were  just  becoming  interested  in  their  physical  condition 
and  their  fears  were  being  overcome  when  school  closed  for  the 
summer. 

In  44  cases  the  figures  for  attendance  in  the  last  two  years  were 
available.  Twelve  could  be  said  to  be  attending  regularly. 
Thirty-one  in  all  showed  an  improvement;  14  showed  about  the 
same  irregularity  or  a  falling  off  in  attendance.  Of  the  12  cases 
showing  marked  improvement,  the  majority  had  been  before  the 
District  Superintendent  or  the  Children's  Court  or  a  brother  and 
sister  had ;  2  were  backed  by  strong  parents ;  one  became  inter- 
ested in  his  schooling;  one  (girl)  had  home  conditions  changed; 
one  (girl)  was  transferred  to  the  ungraded  class.  All  had  had  a 
medical  examination  and  all  but  one  some  medical  attention. 

While  each  truant  should  in  all  cases  have  all  the  medical 
care  his  case  requires,  it  is  too  soon  to  predict  that  such  care  will 
be  a  cure  for  truancy,  however  much  it  may  assist  to  make  more 
efficient  citizens.  Two  boys  on  whom  the  winter's  work  made 
the  least  impress'ion  were  apparently  normal  physically  and 
were  building  up  a  splendid  physique  in  out-door  life  defiant  of 
compulsory  education  laws.  In  contrast  to  them  are  the  two 
following  cases: 

A.  I o  years  old;  5 A  grade;  mentally  normal ;  underdeveloped; 
undernourished,  heart  and  lungs  negative,  tonsils  needing  opera- 
tion;   vision  R.  E.  f-g-;    L.  E.  -§-§•  strabismus,  defective  teeth, 
digestion  bad,  lateral  curvature,  circumcision  needed;    height 
4'  i^",  weight  60  Ibs. 

B.  10  years;  46  grade;  mentality  a  moron;    condition  poor, 
anemic;    tendency  to  pigeon  breast,  tonsils  needing  operation; 
vision  R.  E.  J$;    L.  E.  -fj;    hyperopic  astigmatism;    defective 
teeth,  lateral  curvature,  right  and  left;    circumcision  advised; 
height  5'  7K",  weight  80  Ibs. 

A.  had  no  medical  treatment  further  than  an  examination  and 


a  bottle  of  medicine.  He  had  glasses  but  never  wore  them.  He 
attended  school  about  34  days  last  term,  and  about  May  I  was 
sent  to  Truant  School,  from  which  he  was  transferred  to  the  hos- 
pital for  trachoma,  and  is  to  have  his  other  operations  attended 
to  while  there. 

B.  was  given  tonics.  He  had  two  teeth  filled,  then  decided 
that  he  did  not  like  fillings.  He  received  eye-glasses,  wore  them, 
broke  them  and  protested  against  having  them  replaced,  all 
within  a  month.  His  attendance  last  term  was  100  per  cent,  and 
because  of  his  awakened  interest  in  school,  the  operations  were 
not  done  till  July.  Then  he  had  adenoids,  tonsils,  and  cir- 
cumcision attended  to,  and  is  to  go  to  the  country  for  two  weeks. 

The  homes  differ.  A.'s  parents  drink,  the  family  is  on  the 
downward  road.  One  brother  was  arrested  and  sent  away  for 
stealing.  He  himself  is  said  to  have  taken  part  in  a  hold-up. 
When  the  parents  drink,  the  boy  does  not  attend  school,  and 
often  disappears  from  home  altogether.  The  superintendent  of 
the  hospital  calls  him  the  worst  boy  in  the  ward.  He  knows 
every  trick  for  evading  law  and  order. 

B.  has  a  home  of  only  moderate  comfort  which  he  shares  with 
eight  brothers  and  sisters  of  conflicting  interests.  He  has  a 
severe  father,  and  no  mother.  His  teachers  obtain  a  strong  hold 
on  him.  His  ambition  is  not  killed;  he  is  "going  to  be  a  fire- 
man." 

The  best  results  would  therefore  seem  to  come  from  the  three- 
fold co-operation  of  the  home,  the  school,  and  those  remedying 
physical  defects,  the  hope  of  all  being  to  make  the  child  able  and 
willing  and  anxious  to  get  his  education. 

The  only  fair  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  this  physical  study 
is  not  only  the  obvious  one  that  every  school  child  needs  more 
physical  attention  than  he  is  at  present  receiving  but  that  tru- 
ants especially  who  have  fallen  short  in  one  of  the  prime  require- 
ments of  life  should  have  every  physical  handicap  removed  before 
they  are  regarded  as  cases  for  punitive  treatment.  The  co- 
operation between  the  attendance  officer  and  the  nurse  in  many 
schools  seems  to  be  close,  but  this  is  accidental.  The  effort 
ordinarily  required  to  get  a  child  examined  by  the  school  doctor 
seems  to  be  great,  whereas  it  should  be  not  only  easy  but  even 
automatically  done.  Every  truant  is  physically  examined  be- 
fore being  sent  to  the  truant  school,  but  this  is  too  late  to  save 
the  boy  from  the  necessity  of  being  "sent  up"  and  to  save  the 
city  from  the  expense  of  his  commitment.  It  is  also  too  late  for 
physical  defects  to  be  remedied  before  the  boy  goes  away.  If  a 


40 

psychological  examination  were  given  to  determine  a  boy's 
mental  normality  before  declaring  him  a  truant,  a  thorough 
physical  examination  should  at  the  same  time  be  given  to  every 
boy  who  did  not  prove  mentally  defective.  Then  every  boy  who 
came  to  the  attendance  officer  would  be  certified  to  be  mentally 
normal  and  his  physical  defects  would  already  be  listed  for  the 
school  nurse  to  attend  to.  The  ordinary  medical  inspection 
is  not  sufficient  for  this  purpose  as  many  of  the  boys  in  this  study 
had  never  been  examined  at  all.  Many  others  had  not  been 
examined  for  so  many  years  that  the  records  were  completely 
out  of  date.  Still  others  whose  school  examination  was  of  recent 
date  showed  that  grave  physical  defects  had  gone  undetected  in 
the  hasty  routine  of  the  school  inspection. 


IV.  THE  FAILURE  OF  TRUANTS  TO  CONNECT  SCHOOL 

WITH  LIFE 

Has  the  child  any  outlook  or  ambition  immediate  or  future  that 
makes  school  seem  logical,  desirable,  or  necessary  is  one  of  the 
important  questions  in  the  study  of  truancy.  One  falls  into  the 
habit  of  regarding  truancy  as  the  out-cropping  of  sin  or  vice  as 
something  abnormal  and  unnatural.  Those  who  know  the  mean- 
ing and  value  of  education  speak  as  though  the  instinct  to  get  up 
in  the  morning,  to  take  hat  and  books  and  start  for  school,  was  as 
natural  an  instinct  in  a  boy  as  the  instinct  to  seek  for  food  and 
warmth  in  a  young  puppy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  getting  up 
at  a  regular  time,  starting  for  a  regular  place  where  he  will  be 
confined,  disciplined  and  made  to  work  and  to  do  this  day  after 
day  is  a  highly  evolved  activity  and  the  result  of  training  upon  a 
being  capable  of  assuming  responsibility.  When  we  have  a  boy 
who  is  feeble-minded  and  incapable  of  assuming  responsibility 
and  a  home  that  is  defective  and  incapable  of  training  to  regu- 
larity, it  is  the  great  wonder  that  a  boy  ever  goes  to  school  at  all. 
The  only  substitute  for  these  goads  from  behind  must  be  some- 
thing in  the  school  itself  which  allures  or  entices  the  child  to 
attend.  He  must  be  interested  in  what  he  does  there,  or  he  must 
see  it  as  a  means  to  something  he  wants  to  do  further  on  in  life. 
If  the  school  can  supply  this,  a  boy  will  attend,  even  in  the  face  of 
home  and  neighborhood  deficiencies.  For  the  majority  of  chil- 
dren, the  school  does  this.  There  are  cases  where  individual  re- 
sponsibility, home  training  and  school  interest  all  fail,  and  this 
leaves  the  irresponsible,  untrained,  uninterested  product  of  na- 
ture, the  truant.  He  is  not  a  sinner,  he  is  not  vicious,  he  is  not 
unnatural.  He  is  merely  an  untrained,  unevolved  human  being, 
whom  it  would  seem  to  be  the/ftinction  of  the  school  to  attract, 
to  interest  and  to  train,  in  spite  of  himself. 

The  material  gathered  on  this  point  of  what  the  school  does 
to  make  good  the  deficiencies  of  the  home  and  the  neighborhood 
is  rather  difficult  to  show  in  tabular  form.  It  was  gathered 
around  the  following  points: 

41 


42 

1st:  Number  of  non-promotions  and  character  of  school 
marks,  both  indicating  whether  the  feeling  of  success  or  failure 
was  acting  as  a  goad  or  a  millstone. 

2nd.  What  the  child  did  when  playing  truant  as  showing  what 
his  rival  activities  were  and  where  his  real  interest  was,  if  not  in 
school. 

3rd.  What  the  child  looked  forward  to  as  an  adult  occupation: 
that  is,  whether  the  future  appealed  to  his  imagination  as  some- 
thing to  work  toward  or  seemed  not  to  figure  at  all  in  his  thoughts. 

NON-PROMOTION  AS  A  CAUSE  OF  NON-ATTENDANCE 
In  regard  to  the  first  point,  non-promotion  or  a  series  of  non- 
promotions  as  shown  on  the  blue  record  cards  of  the  school  had 
preceded  the  first  sign  of  truancy  in  nearly  every  case.  In  the 
43  per  cent  of  feeble-minded  and  8  per  cent  of  borderline 
cases  this  was  to  be  expected.  Here  records  of  appalling  dis- 
couragement were  written.  Often  two,  sometimes  three,  terms 
in  every  class  accompanied  by  C  and  D  rating  with  a  constant 
repetition  of  "not  proficient  in  arithmetic  and  reading,"  or  "not 
proficient  in  arithmetic  and  spelling"  became  monotonously 
common  in  the  study  of  these  records. 

In  the  school  histories  of  the  normal  children,  however,  one 
hoped  to  find  a  record  of  one  term  in  a  grade  from  I A  to  8  B  in  a 
majority  of  cases.  Among  the  normal  truants,  however,  this  is 
far  too  often  varied  with  a  repetition  of  a  grade,  changes  from 
one  school  to  another,  and  finally  with  sojourns  at  the  protectory 
or  one  of  the  truant  schools.  The  habit  of  taking  a  transfer 
from  one  school  to  another,  especially  to  a  Parochial  School, 
appears  on  the  face  of  these  records  as  commonly  as  it  does  in  the 
stories  of  the  mothers  and  of  the  attendance  officers  themselves. 
One  of  these  boys  had  attended  seven  different  schools  during 
five  years  of  his  school  life,  not  counting  the  Catholic  Protectory, 
where  he  had  been  sent  for  truancy. 

On  the  whole,  promotion  seemed  to  be  a  great  stimulus  to 
attendance  but  by  the  same  token,  non-promotion  seemed  in 
more  cases  than  not  to  have  been  the  starting  point  for  non- 
attendance. 

WHAT  TRUANTS  DO  WHEN  NOT  IN  SCHOOL 
The  question  which  was  put  to  every  child  at  some  time 
during  one  of  the  interviews  with  him,  "What  do  you  do  when 


43 

you  go  on  the  hook?"  brought  a  surprisingly  small  variety  of 
answers.  For  the  most  part,  however,  they  were  truthful. 
Those  boys  who  had  anything  to  conceal  usually  became  vague 
instead  of  producing  an  innocent  substitute  for  the  truth.  The 
one  thing  common  to  them  all  was  the  pervasive  mood  of  free- 
dom. "Oh,  I  go  all  around,"  is  a  direct  quotation  from  over  a 
dozen  West  Side  boys.  This  was  often  followed  up  by  more 
specific  stories  of  going  after  wood,  down  on  the  docks,  or  "to 
my  Aunt's  in  89th  Street."  Another  favorite  resort  was  "to 
the  Park  to  see  the  animals."  One  almost  believed  from  the 
frequency  of  this  reply  that  a  special  officer  stationed  at  the 
animal  cages  would  catch  his  quota  of  truants  there  every  day. 
And  as  a  matter  of  fact  almost  any  pleasant  morning  whoever 
cares  to  "go  on  the  hook"  and  will  look  in  on  the  new  bear  cubs 
in  Central  Park  will  find  plenty  of  little  boys  of  school  age  to 
keep  him  company  in  that  alluring  occupation. 

This  way  of  passing  the  stolen  hours,  innocent  in  itself,  pre- 
vails mostly  among  the  smaller  boys.  Many  of  the  older  boys 
are  engaged  in  the  very  characteristic  West  Side  occupation  of 
pigeon  flying.  This  is  done  from  the  roofs  of  the  tenements, 
where  one  gang  is  pitted  against  another,  stealing  pigeons  back 
and  forth,  and  the  sport  becomes,  when  over-indulged  in,  a  very 
deteriorating  occupation.  Pigeon  flying  is  one  of  the  activities 
by  which  the  loafers  of  the  neighborhood,  boys  over  school  age 
who  are  chronically  out  of  work,  lure  the  school  boys  into  their 
gangs.  It  was  one  of  these  gangs  that  on  nth  Avenue  dropped 
a  brick  on  the  head  of  a  truant  officer  last  winter,  so  the  story 
goes,  and  but  for  the  protection  of  his  stiff  derby  hat  would  have 
killed  him.  These  gangsters  ^re  the  worst  influence  in  the 
neighborhood,  working  not  only  against  school  attendance  but 
against  home  control  and  good  ideals.  To  the  younger  boys 
they  look  like  heroes.  They  fight  and  swear  and  spit  and  chew 
and  boast.  They  advertise  themselves  to  the  small  boy  as 
"what  you  will  be  if  you  do  as  we  say,"  and  the  small  boy,  as 
they  say,  "falls  for  it"  for  lack  of  any  other  vision  of  the  period 
of  life  just  ahead  of  him.  These  older  boys  promise  to  protect 
the  younger  ones  from  the  "cop,"  the  truant  officer,  and  the 
court.  For  every  boy  in  such  a  gang  who  gets  sent  up,  dozens 
escape.  Therefore  the  younger  boys  believe  in  the  proffered 
guardianship  and  accept  it. 

The  school  does  not  feel  more  bitterly  against  these  gangs  than 
do  the  mothers  of  the  boys  themselves,  but  both  seem  powerless 


44 

to  contend  against  them.  The  West  Side  gang  is  a  sort  of  self- 
perpetuating  institution  which  is  constantly  fed  from  beneath 
by  the  ranks  of  truants  as  the  older  members  pass  on  to  deeper 
shades  of  vice,  graduating  into  the  thugs  and  saloon  toughs  of 
the  neighborhood,  who  in  turn  lend  protection  to  the  next  in 
succession. 

The  only  way  to  keep  a  boy  out  of  these  gangs  on  the  West 
Side  is  to  keep  him  in  a  school  and  at  home.  When  the  mother 
is  at  work  all  day  and  the  boy  gets  ahead  of  her,  the  gang  is  wait- 
ing to  receive  him.  It  is  small  wonder  that  many  of  the  women 
beg  to  have  their  boys  sent  to  the  truant  schools. 


THE  TRUANT'S  IDEA  OF  His  WAGE-EARNING  CAREER 
The  third  point  in  regard  to  the  child's  idea  of  his  own  future  is 
illuminated  by  the  list  of  occupations  that  were  given  by  boys 
who  had  formulated  any  plans  whatsoever.  Their  answers  were 
divided  into  two  groups, — those  which  showed  imagination  and 
those  which  simply  accepted  what  the  environment  had  to  offer 
as  the  easiest  entrance  into  wage  earning  without  regard  to  per- 
sonal preference  or  future  economic  prospects: 


SHOWING  IMAGINATION  (WEST  SIDE) 

"A  job  to  open  doors  for  ladies  who 
get  out  of  automobiles." 

"  Going  out  in  the  world  to  make  my 
way."  ^ 

11  An  engineer  and  run  an  engine." 

"A  job  in  a  pool  room,  you  get 
lots  of  tips." 

"Bring  stuff  around  to  boys  in  in- 
stitutions." 

"Going  to  be  a  sailor." 

"An  artist  and  paint  scenes  on  the 
walls  of  saloons." 

"Chauffeur." 

"Carpenter."  (After  a  term  in  the 
truant  school.) 

"Engineer  in  factory." 

"Electrician." 


(EAST  SIDE) 
'College." 
'Broker." 
'Doctor." 
'Lawyer." 
'Architect." 
'Civil  engineer." 
'On  the  railroad." 


SHOWING  NO  IMAGINATION  (WEST 

SIDE) 

'Iron  foundry." 
'Piano  factory." 
'Errand  boy." 
'Office  boy." 
'Bundle  boy  in  hotel." 
'Fireman  on  engine." 
'Elevator  boy." 
'Paper  boy." 
'Helper  to  someone." 
'Work  for  city." 
'Some  trade." 
'Messenger    boy    in    a    disorderly 

house."     (Already  has  the  job.) 
'  Get  a  nice  easy  job." 
'What  I  can  get." 
'Anything." 
'Don't  care." 
'Don't  know." 

(EAST  SIDE) 
'Fruit  seller." 
'Baker." 
'Office  work." 
'With  father  in  Safe  Co." 
'Pencil  factory." 


In  very  few  West  Side  cases  did  the  present  school  life  seem  to 


45 

connect  in  the  boy's  mind  with  his  individual  future.  With  the 
East  Side  boys  there  was  ample  manifestation  of  a  strong  sub- 
jective connection.  The  boys  who  wanted  to  go  to  college,  to 
be  a  doctor,  a  lawyer,  or  an  architect  all  saw  school  as  a  means  of 
getting  there  and  even  though  they  had  drifted  into  truancy 
temporarily,  this  ambition  furnished  a  lever  by  which  it  was  pos- 
sible to  urge  them  back  into  school.  What  the  West  Side  boy 
lacks  in  impetus  from  within  himself  and  stimulus  from  the  neigh- 
borhood and  home  surroundings  should  in  some  objective  way 
be  made  up  to  him  by  the  school.  Even  a  feeble-minded  boy 
has  more  interest  in  coming  to  school  when  his  teacher  tells  him 
he  can  learn  to  do  something  that  will  help  him  to  get  a  better 
job,  especially  if  she  continues  to  hold  this  thought  before  him. 
Of  course  it  is  difficult  in  the  regular  grades  for  the  teacher  to 
find  time  for  the  consideration  of  individual  ideals,  but  even  in 
the  working  paper  classes  which  are  small,  the  boys  had  made  no 
plans  for  wage-earning  careers.  "Oh,  I'll  get  some  kind  of  a 
job, "  was  the  usual  attitude.  One  boy  who  had  only  8  more  days 
to  attend  school  before  getting  his  working  papers,  said,  "Oh, 
I  suppose  I'll  work  at  something."  Other  boys  who  declared 
they  were  eager  to  go  to  work,  had  their  interest  chiefly  centered 
in  making  money  rather  than  on  any  special  kind  of  work  which 
they  wanted  to  do. 

Two  things  were  equally  noticeable  in  the  conversations  on  the 
subject  of  future  occupations.  First  was  the  absolutely  unstim- 
ulated  attitude  of  the  boys,  all  within  a  year  or  so  of  working  age 
and  many  within  a  few  months  of  actually  seeking  employment. 
Apparently  neither  &t  home  nor  at  school  had  anyone  presented 
to  them  any  constructive  plans  for  a  "career."  Second  was 
the  eagerness  with  which  they  entered  into  conversation  on  the 
subject  and  welcomed  suggestions  of  any  kind.  It  would  seem 
that  individual  interviews  with  these  boys  concerning  their 
economic  prospects  and  the/relation  of  education  to  success 
would  be  a  fruitful  means  of  interesting  them  in  regular  attend- 
ance. While  vocational  training  in  the  schools  and  pre-voca- 
tional  classes  are  under  discussion  and  scientific  vocational  guid- 
ance is  merely  a  phrase,  doubtless  a  little  unscientific/but  inter- 
ested conversation  between  individual  teachers  and  individual 
boys  would  be  most  remunerative  in  helping  the  child  to  bridge 
that  wide  gap  between  the  known  and  the  unknown,  and  in 
giving  him  a  vision  of  a  future  career  founded  on  his  present  edu- 
cation. 


SUMMARY 

In  conclusion,  the  original  questions  around  which  the  material 
for  the  study  was  gathered  and  a  brief  summary  of  the  results 
secured  are  here  given. 

1.  Is  this  child  of  normal  mentality? 

In  43%  of  the  150  cases, — No. 
In  49%  of  the  150  cases, — Yes. 
In  8%  of  the  150  cases, — It  is  doubtful. 

2.  Does  this  child  come  from  a  complete  economic  family? 

In  26%  of  the  150  cases, — Yes. 
In  74%  of  the  150  cases, — No. 

3.  Is  this  child  below  the  average  physically? 

The  44  cases  studied  were  probably  not  below  the  average 
school  child  of  the  neighborhood  but  far  below  the  normal. 

4.  Has  this  child  any  outlook  or  ambition,  immediate  or  future, 
that  makes  school  seem  logical,  desirable,  or  necessary? 

The  only  stimulus  which  the  school  offers,  namely  promotion 
and  good  marks,  these  children  did  not  have.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  did  have  non-promotion  and  poor  marks  to  dis- 
courage them. 

The  home  and  neighborhood  influences  of  the  West  Side  are 
both  defective  in  supplying  stimulus  to  ambition. 

Apparently  neither  teachers  nor  parents  have  ever  attempted 
to  give  these  children  any  vision  of  the  relation  of  their  present 
education  to  their  future  wage-earning  careers. 

Truancy  is  like  sickness  in  that  every  case  cannot  be  cured  by 
a  dose  from  the  same  bottle.  More  than  half  the  value  of  the 
treatment  must  consist  in  a  careful  and  correct  diagnosis  of  the 
cause  in  each  case.  In  this  comparatively  small  number  of  cases 
of  truancy  (150)  so  many  different  causes  have  been  found  that 
there  must  be  on  the  entire  list  of  truants  throughout  the  city  a 
still  larger  number  of  causes  as  yet  undetected.  Only  an  ana- 

46 


47 

ly tical  method  of  treating  these  cases  can  bring  about  an  intelligent 
and  effective  handling  of  them.  The  one  recommendation  that 
can  strongly  be  made  as  a  result  of  this  study  is  that  a  thorough 
and  competent  psychological  and  physical  examination  be  made 
of  every  case  reported  for  truancy,  and  that  those  cases  found  to 
be  mentally  defective  shall  not  be  given  punitive  treatment  as 
truants  but  removed  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  compulsory 
attendance  department  entirely  and  educated  in  the  schools  or 
in  institutions  as  feeble-minded  children.  This  would  decrease 
the  number  of  cases  to  be  handled  and  immensely  increase  the 
possibilities  of  success  in  the  handling  of  the  normal  cases  by  the 
attendance  officers  and  truant  schools. 


APPENDIX 


EXCERPTS  FROM  REPORTS  PRESENTED  BY 

FREDERICK  W.  ELLIS  AND 

E.  HELEN  HANNAHS 

OF  THE  DEPARTMENT  OF  SOCIAL  RESEARCH  OF  THE  NEURO- 
LOGICAL INSTITUTE,  NEW  YORK  CITY 

I.   TESTS  USED  IN  THE  MENTAL  EXAMINATION-- 

Group  I.     Establishment  of  General  Habits  and  Relations. 

1.  Name  and  address.     Place  of  birth. 

2.  Day  and  date  (8:4).     Months  of  the  year  (9:4).     Date  of  birth. 

3.  Handwriting,  punctuation,  spelling,  vocabulary  and  grammar  of  the 
written  work. 

4.  Counting  forward  and  backward  by  rote  and  by  skips  (8:2). 

5.  Family   history.     Personal   history.     School   history.     Employment. 
Other  personal  data. 

Group  II.     Readiness  in  Making  New  Adjustments. 

1.  Recall  of  figures  (8:5). 

2.  Making  crosses  or  other  graphic  signs. 

3.  Peg  board. 

4.  Reproduction  of  geometrical  forms  (10:2). 

5.  Reproduction  of  sentences  (15:3). 

Group  III.     Continuous  Effort  in  the  Process  of  Adjustment. 

1.  Recall  of  objects  (Kirkpatrick).     Grouping  of  objects. 

2.  Arranging  weights  (Galton;   10:1).     Estimating  lengths  (12:1). 

3.  Cancellation  test  (Bourdon). 

4.  Directions  test  (Wood worth). 

5.  Mixed  sentences  (12:5). 

Group  IV.     Ability  to  Construct  under  Controlled  Conditions. 

1.  Continuous  addition  (Kraepelin;  Simpson). 

2.  Simple  calculations. 

3.  Paper  tearing  (Adult: I ). 

4.  Form  board  (Seguin).     Construction  puzzle  (Healy). 

5.  Invention  of  story  with  given  objects. 

Group  V.     Purposive  Control  of  the  Thinking  Processes. 

1.  Sentence  completion  (Ebbinghaus;  9:5;  10:4). 

2.  Incorporation  of  three  given  words  in  a  sentence  (Masselon;    10:5; 
12:2). 

3.  Writing  opposites  (Thorndike). 

4.  Free  word  production  (Jastrow;   12:3). 

5.  Description  of  pictures  (7:2;   15:4). 

4  49 

I 


50 

Group  VI.     Precision  in  Dealing  with  Likeness  and  Difference. 

1.  Omissions  in  pictures  (8:3). 

2.  Comparison  of  remembered  objects  (8:1). 

3.  Definitions  above  use  (9:2). 

4.  Detection  of  absurdities  (10:3). 

5.  Use  of  abstract  terms  (12:4). 

NOTE. — The  figures  in  parenthesis  refer  to  corresponding  tests  in  the 
Binet  antLSimon  Intelligence  Test. 


II.    REPRESENTATIVE  CASES  FROM  DIFFERENT 

GROUPS 

FROM  THE  MENTALLY  DEFECTIVE  GROUP 

Hammer,  William. 

Age:   14  years,  10  months,  12  days. 

Binet  and  Simon  score:  9.4. 

Physical  growth  period :  Early  adolescence. 

Mental  growth  period:  Later  childhood,  more  active  type. 

Retardation:  Two  growth  periods. 

School  grade:  56. 

General  Information. 

Physical  Condition:  He  was  born  in  Germany,  His  birth  and  develop- 
ment were  normal.  He  was  breast  fed  one  year.  There  were  no  con- 
vulsions. He  has  had  measles.  He  was  operated  on  for  adenoids  and 
enlarged  tonsils  but  still  has  obstructed  breathing.  He  fell  from  his  bi- 
cycle when  young  and  was  thought  to  have  injured  his  nose. 

Family  History:  His  father  Gustav was  born  in  Hamburg,  Germany.  He 
came  to  the  United  States  about  1900,  and  nine  months  later  brought  over 
his  wife  and  children.  His  people  were  farmers  in  Germany.  His  father 
died  thirty-seven  years  ago.  His  mother,  two  brothers  and  two  sisters 
came  to  the  United  States.  His  mother  died  here.  One  brother  is  a 
pilot.  His  sisters  have  a  good  business  but  "don't  help  him  any."  He 
worked  until  recently  in  a  piano  factory  at  twenty-five  dollars  every  two 
weeks.  He  is  now  laid  off  because  "they  are  taking  on  young  boys  at  five 
dollars  and  laying  off  old  help."  The  father  looks  able  bodied  and  does 
not  seem  to  be  alcoholic.  He  talks  with  a  strong  accent  difficult  to  under- 
stand. 

The  mother  was  born  in  Germany.  Her  parents  are  dead.  Her  people 
did  not  immigrate.  There  is  no  consanguinity.  The  children  are: 

1.  Daughter;  married;  one  child. 

2.  Daughter;  married;  two  children. 

3.  Son;  married;  works  on  tinfoil  for  tobacco. 

4.  Son;  died  while  teething. 

5.  Son;  20  years,  formerly  with  Buffalo  Bill  Company. 

6.  Daughter;    18  years;  lives  out  as  servant.     No  work  at  present. 

7.  William. 

8.  George. 

9.  Daughter;  8  years;  school  lA,  was  tongue  tied  and  operated  on 
twice  with  some  improvement.     Not  strong.     No  appetite. 

10.  Son;   4  years  old;   at  home.     Left  with  married  daughter  when 
mother  works  out. 

Home  Life:  The  father  does  not  have  steady  work.     The  mother  has  been 


51 

working  in  families  to  help  support  her  own  family  at  one  dollar  sixty 
cents  a  day.  The  children  have  been  on  the  street.  They  pay  nine 
dollars  rent.  The  boys  have  to  be  home  at  8  p.  M.  They  are  given  three 
cents  each  to  buy  their  noon  lunch.  William  is  anxious  to  go  to  work. 
He  has  no  birth  certificate  and  cannot  get  his  working  papers.  He  helps 
a  peddler  Saturdays  at  fifty  cents  a  day.  The  family  have  been  helped 
by  their  church  in  various  ways.  The  mother  has  been  provided  with 
work  and  the  boys  have  been  taken  to  Sunday  School. 

School  Problem:  He  has  been  left  back  a  number  of  times  and  has  been 
markedly  deficient  in  spelling  and  arithmetic.  He  says  he  is  going  to 
High  School  and  to  college  and  at  the  same  time  says  he  plays  truant 
because  "school  is  too  hard."  He  is  three  years  retarded  in  his  grade. 

BiNET-SiMON  INTELLIGENCE  TEST 
YEAR  NUMBER  OF  TESTS 

123456 
I,     2 

3 

4 

I  t 

7    i    I    $    i    i 

8  t         t         t  t         t 

9  t        -         t  t         t 
10  -  I 
12  I  % 
15  -  - 

INTERPRETATION  OF  BINET-SIMON  TEST 

Binet  and  Simon  Intelligence  Test:  He  is  an  adolescent  in  his  physical 
growth,  and  in  his  mental  development  is  in  his  later  childhood  period. 
He  is  getting  his  later  childhood  mental  experience  in  an  active  way,  that 
gives  some  promise  of  his  reaching  the  pre-adolescent  stage.  To  do  this 
he  needs  only  to  give  description  of  common  objects  that  include  char- 
acteristics peculiar  to  them  alone.  He  seems  likely  to  do  this,  judging  by 
the  effort  he  made.  He  is  one  full  growth  period  retarded  and  part  of 
another,  a  degree  of  backwardness  that  makes  him  a  subject  for  careful 
scrutiny.  Should  he  emerge  into  the  next  period  there  is  little  promise 
of  his  engaging  very  actively  in  its  pre-adolescent  mental  experiences. 

INTERPRETATION  OF  GENERAL  MENTAL  TEST 

Efficiency  Test:  I.  General  Mental  Habits:  He  is  not  very  well  estab- 
lished in  the  forms  of  thinking  appropriate  to  his  physical  age.  He  made 
time  statements  correctly.  He  made  statements  of  place  indifferently 
in  the  matter  of  details.  His  handwriting  is  poor  but  legible.  His  spell- 
ing is  faulty.  Examples  of  this  are:  "ribbin"  for  ribbon;  "waiter"  for 
"way  to";  "stared"  for  started;  "whos"  for  whose;  "differculty"  for 
difficulty;  "honur"  for  honor;  "befor"  for  before.  He  spelled  correctly 
some  equally  difficult  words,  as  neighbor,  beautiful,  separate,  crooked, 
roughness,  excused,  fault.  The  unevenness  suggests  a  possible  element  of 
carelessness.  He  certainly  was  careless  in  counting,  as  he  came  out  18 
too  many  in  a  total  of  170.  As  4  separate  lines  count  up  to  18  it  is  prob- 
able that  he  counted  one  line  twice.  His  vocabulary  is  quite  objective 
and  his  words  produced  with  fair  fluency. 

II.  Readiness  in  Meeting  New  Situations:  His  sensori-motor  perform- 
ances are  fair.  His  crosses  were  of  the  second  grade  and  fair  in  number. 
He  reproduced  all  the  geometrical  forms,  with  some  inaccuracy  in  the 
fifth  and  seventh.  His  effort  on  the  seventh  was  better  than  on  a  previous 


52 

trial  in  February.  He  recalled  only  5  figures.  He  recalled  neither 
sentence  with  verbal  accuracy,  but  his  imperfections  were  not  such  as  to 
suggest  a  natural  language  defect  so  much  as  an  ineffective  effort  to  form 
language  habits. 

III.  Persistence  in  Gaining  Effects.     He  did  well  in  two  important  tests 
in  this  group.     In  the  cancellation  test  he  scored  correctly  18  out  of  the 
20  lines.     He  succeeded  in  arranging  two  of  the  mixed  sentences  and  ap- 
proximated correctness  in  a  third. 

In  other  tests  he  did  poorly.  He  failed  in  judging  weights  and  in  judging 
lengths.  He  recalled  9  out  of  10  objects,  but  he  was  quite  incoherent  in 
his  attempts  to  recall  the  order.  He  was  at  a  loss  to  establish  any 
relations  between  the  objects  without  going  outside  the  objects. 
If  he  is  to  be  credited  with  carelessness,  this  absence  of  emotional  reac- 
tion to  the  objects  might  be  an  adequate  explanation.  He  is  much  more 
efficient  when  he  is  dealing  with  definite  materials,  and  this  is  true  whether 
the  materials  be  sensori-motor  or  ideational.  Where  he  has  to  contribute 
interest  to  the  situation  he  is  not  effective. 

IV.  Ability  to  Elaborate  Situations:  The  characteristics  displayed  in  the 
previous  group  are  evident  here.     He  added  3  sums  correctly,  failed  in 
the  fourth,  added  I  correctly,  failed  on  the  sixth,  then  added  3  correctly. 
His  total  of  7  out  of  9  in  2  minutes  was  not  bad,  but  there  seemed  to  be 
no  good  reason  for  his  failures  except  a  fluctuation  of  interest  in  the  task. 
He  was  slow  in  placing  the  forms  in  the  board,  but  quick  in  working  out 
his  puzzle.     No  reason  could  be  assigned  for  this  discrepancy,  unless 
again  it  be  fluctuating  interest.     He  did  not  do  his  calculations.     He  did 
not  construct  a  pattern  from  tearing  folded  paper.     His  attempt  at  in- 
venting a  story  showed  some  maturity  of   interest  in  the  value  of  the 
objects  for  creating  a  situation,  but  did  not  go  beyond  this.     He  has  not 
an  active  mind  and  except  where  the  material  is  merely  to  be  manipulated 
does  little  in  making  combinations. 

V.  Dealing  with  Alternatives  in  Purposive  Thinking:    His  performances 
here  were  immature  and  ineffective  to  the  point  of  indifference.     This  is 
true  of  the  incomplete  sentences  where  he  fails  in  one  of  the  easy  and  all 
of  the  more  difficult  ones.     It  is  also  true  of  the  attempt  at  making  a 
sentence  including  three  words,  where  his  sentence  is  correct   in  form, 
but  negligent  of  any  exact  meaning.     In  the  opposites  test  he  gave  cor- 
rect alternatives  for  7  of  the  first  8,  and  only  a  scattered  4  out  of  the  re- 
maining 12.     He  gave  a  voluminous  description  of  the  pictures,  but  only 
developed  a  simple  explanation  in  the  first  one  of  the  three. 

VI.  Dealing  with  Positive  and  Negative  Elements  in  Situations:   He  did 
moderately  well  on  the  less  mature  tests,  but  failed  to  specify  what  was 
wrong  in  the  absurd  statements,  and  did  not  recognize  any  essential 
characteristics  in  the  general  terms. 

Summary:  He  has  some  ability,  of  a  slightly  immature  degree  of  develop- 
ment, but  this  is  offset  by  a  considerable  degree  of  mental  inertia.  He 
sometimes  recognizes  the  more  important  elements  in  situations,  and  is 
ready  to  do  something  if  appealed  to,  without  deep  concern  as  to  the  out- 
come. This  was  illustrated  by  his  brave  attempts  at  the  hard  opposites, 
only  3  of  which  turned  out  correctly.  He  is  not  resourceful  and  only 
makes  a  good  showing  when  situations  are  modified  to  admit  of  an  obvious 
and  easy  completion.  As  a  workman  he  does  not  give  promise  of  doing 
work  that  is  not  presented  in  single  operations.  School  has  lost  its  inter- 
est for  him,  and  this  is  not  likely  to  be  revived  outside  of  a  vocational 
school.  It  is  not  obvious  that  he  would  do  effective  work  at  any  employ- 
ment. It  seems  likely  to  be  difficult  to  keep  him  stimulated  to  the  degree 
of  activity  that  will  make  him  more  than  barely  self-sustaining  and  this 
only  for  himself. 


53 

Ambrosini,  John. 

Age:  13  years,  I  month,  27  days. 

Binet  and  Simon  score:  9.2. 

Physical  growth  period:  Pre-adolescent. 

Mental  growth  period:  Later  childhood,  the  more  active  type. 

Retardation:  One  growth  period. 

School  grade:  56.     Now  in  a  special  D  class  for  conduct.     One  year  retarded. 

Physical  Condition:  He  is  undersized.  His  head  is  poorly  shaped.  His 
hands  are  coarse  and  bleeding.  Every  four  days  he  has  some  kind  of 
attack  that  keeps  him  in  bed  with  nausea. 

School  Problem:  He  is  a  truant;  he  steals;  he  is  troublesome  in  school. 
He  is  only  one  year  retarded.  He  has  had  fairly  good  marks  all  the  way 
up  from  i  A. 

Ambrosini,  Pietro. 
Age:  II  years,  7  months. 
Binet  and  Simon  score:  7.6. 
Physical  growth  period:  Later  childhood. 
Mental  growth  period:  Early  childhood,  the  less  active  type. 
Retardation:  One  growth  period. 

School  grade:    28.      He  is  in  a  C  class  for  foreigners.     He  is  three  years 
retarded  and  cannot  do  the  26  work. 

Physical  Condition:  He  is  undersized.  His  head  and  hands  are  of  an 
inferior  type.  He  has  a  pinched  look.  He  is  left  handed.  His  speech 
is  indistinct  and  blurred.  He  sticks  out  his  tongue  as  he  works. 

Family  History:  The  parents  are  Italian  born.  There  are  eight  children. 
The  two  oldest  brothers  are  in  confinement,  one  of  them  under  charge  of 
murder  in  Waterbury,  Connecticut.  The  third  brother  is  home  on  tem- 
porary leave  from  a  Protectory  where  he  spent  the  last  year.  He  is  to 
return  to  the  Protectory  for  the  summer.  John  is  the  fourth  child  and 
Pietro  the  fifth.  The  three  smaller  children  look  delicate,  the  youngest,  a 
baby  of  two  months,  especially  so.  The  father  is  apparently  healthy. 
The  mother  is  very  large. 

Home  Life:  The  father  is  inclined  to  be  demonstrative.  The  mother 
appears  to  be  a  nice  woman  but  assumes  a  helpless  attitude  when  ques- 
tioned about  her  sons  and  husband.  She  says  of  them  that  they  "are 
no  good. "  She  keeps  the  home  neat  and  apparently  gets  good  meals  for 
her  family.  The  father  does  little  towards  the  support  of  the  family. 

School  Problem:  He  can  do  no  school  work  at  all.  He  has  been  put  in  a 
C  class  for  foreigners  because  he  was  so  small  and  so  troublesome.  He  has 
always  been  deficient  in  every  subject.  He  is  a  truant. 

BINET-SIMON  INTELLIGENCE  TEST 
JOHN  PIETRO 

12345  12345 

6  J  6  {     J     I     %     I 

H  m  i  l-  ili  II 

9     t     %     t     t    -  9.    .1  •-    t 

io-----  10    -    - 

12      -      -      %      -      -                                                                      I2_____ 
I5      -      I 15 


54 

INTERPRETATION  OF  PIETRO'S  BINET-SIMON  TEST 

Binet  and  Simon  Intelligence  Test:  He  is  in  the  pre-adolescent  stage  of 
his  physical  growth.  His  mental  development  is  two  growth  periods  in 
arrears,  and  he  is  getting  his  early  childhood  mental  experiences  in  an 
inactive  way  that  gives  poor  promise  of  further  development.  Although 
he  is  12  years  old  in  July  he  did  not  tell  right  from  left,  only  mentioned 
objects  in  pictures,  instead  of  giving  simple  descriptions,  did  not  carry  out 
3  simple  orders  given  him  at  one  time,  did  not  note  the  omissions  in  muti- 
lated outline  pictures,  did  not  describe  objects  by  their  distinctive  uses, 
did  not  recite  the  months  of  the  year,  and  did  not  give  any  conclusion  at 
all  for  simple  unfinished  sentences.  He  passes  none  of  the  tests  of  the 
pre-adolescent  period.  The  impression  gained  from  this  testing  is  one  of 
settled  incapacity  for  any  but  the  most  primitive  tasks.  It  is  interesting 
to  compare  him  with  his  brother  16  months  older,  as  they  have  the  same 
heredity,  were  brought  up  under  the  same  conditions,  and  present  the 
same  social  fault.  The  summaries  of  the  Binet  and  Simon  examinations 
of  the  two  boys  are  placed  here  side  by  side  for  comparison. 

INTERPRETATION  OF  PIETRO'S  GENERAL  MENTAL  TEST 
Efficiency  Test:  I.  General  Mental  Habits:  This  boy's  general  mental 
performances  are  about  on  a  level  with  his  older  brother's.  He  has  the 
same  difficulty  in  establishing  mental  co-operation;  he  is  indifferent  to 
exact  statement  of  times;  he  is  lax  in  statement  of  places;  his  handwriting 
is  equal  to  John's  in  legibility  but  lacks  some  of  John's  regularity;  he  had 
the  same  difficulty  in  counting,  although  with  more  excuse  on  account  of 
the  crowded  condition  of  his  tally  marks.  There  is  not  enough  differ- 
ence here  to  account  for  the  fact  that  Pietro  is  in  26  while  John  is  in  56. 
The  later  tests  must  be  relied  on  for  an  adequate  explanation. 

II.  Readiness  in  Meeting  New  Situations:   Pietro  recalled  figures  better 
than  his  older  brother.     He  also  pegged  a  trifle  faster.     Like  John  he 
reproduced  successfully  only  two  of  the  geometrical  forms,  but  the  gen- 
eral character  of  this  work  was  poorer.     His  work  in  continued  cross- 
making  was  2  grades  lower,  and  snowed  poor  manual  co-ordination.     He 
did  poorer  work  in  repeating  sentences,  in  neither  case  being  able  to  com- 
plete the  sentence.     This  very  low  power  of  adjustment  to  simplified 
and  definite  situations  goes  a  long  way  in  accounting  for  the  different 
rank  of  the  two  boys  in  school. 

III.  Persistence  in  Gaining  Effects:    He  has  the  same  fairly  satisfactory 
immediate  recall  as  his  brother,  with  some  advantage  in  the  matter  of 
order.     Both  fail  to  connect  objects  by  an  over-lapping  of  inherent  inter- 
ests, but  this  boy  is  much  less  successful  in  his  attempts,  both  at  recogniz- 
ing and  at  describing  relations.     He  put  a  rider  and  chair  together  with 
the  explanation;    "So  the  man  can  sit  down."     He  put  the  axe  and 
chicken  together,  but  in  describing  their  interest  to  him  overlooked  the 
chance  to  indulge  his  fancy  and  explained:  "The  axe  is  going  to  chop  the 
wood."     He  seems  to  be  lingering  in  the  stage  of  getting  simple  recogni- 
tion of  often  repeated  situations,  appearing  in  his  mind  as  dimly  familiar 
images.     He  cancelled  better  than  his  brother,   improving  noticeably 
toward  the  end  of  the  task  and  scoring  correctly  1 1  lines  to  his  brother's 
4.     His  mental  behavior,  then,  is  slightly  more  orderly,  and  he  is  quite  a 
little  more  steady  in  application.     Where  order  and  physical  application 
do  not  count  he  is  not  so  good.     He  failed  in  judging  weights  and  lengths. 
Most  significant  was  his  total  failure  to  restore  any  order  to  the  mixed 
sentences. 

IV.  Ability  to  Elaborate  Situations:   One  who  cannot  recognize  the  pos- 
sible interest  in  situations  can  hardly  be  expected  to  do  much  toward  com- 
bining materials  into  new  situations.     He  failed  in  all  four  of  his  attempts 
at  addition,  which  puts  him  in  an  inferior  relation  to  school  work  as  com- 
pared with  his  brother.     He  was  a  few  seconds  slower  with  the  form 


55 

board  but  considerably  faster  with  the  puzzle.  His  appreciation  of  the 
value  of  the  objects  for  story  making  was  livelier,  and  this  correlates  well 
with  his  better  recall  of  order  for  similar  objects.  The  interests  dis- 
covered in  the  objects  were  still  sparse,  as  shown  by  the  fact  of  their  gen- 
eral dissimilarity.  This  also  correlates  with  his  failure  to  make  any  good 
simple  associations  in  this  first  set  of  objects  shown  him.  Pietro's  mind  can 
be  stimulated  by  contact  with  other  minds,  perhaps  more  readily  than 
John's,  but  the  resultant  mental  activities  are  not  so  abundant  or  so  well 
ordered  as  to  enable  him  to  participate  in  their  efforts  at  managing  mate- 
rials and  dealing  with  situations  so  as  to  alter  them  to  his  advantage. 

V.  Dealing  with  Alternatives  in  Purposive  Thinking:   The  same  thing  is 
true  of  his  lack  of  ability  to  keep  pace  mentally  with  those  who  are  think- 
ing out  definite  purposes  and  putting  them  into  effect.     In  this  he  is  dis- 
tinctly inferior  to  his  brother.     Where  his  brother  gave  irrelevant  con- 
clusions to  the  partially  elaborated  situations  pictured  in  the  unfinished 
sentences,  he  merely  repeated  the  statement  in  a  more  incoherent  form. 

VI.  Dealing  with  Positive  and  Negative  Elements  in  Situations:  He  was 
not  only  inferior  to  his  brother  here,  but  his  inefficiency  amounts  to  a 
real  incapacity  for  entering  into  clear  relations  with  the  natural  order 
about  him.     The  comparisons  offer  an  illustration  of  this  so  typical  as  to 
call  for  quotation :   "A  butterfly  can  lay  honey  but  a  fly  can't.     You  can 
burn  wood  but  you  can't  burn  cloth.     You  can  put  cloth  on  the  table 
and  you  can  burn  paper. ' '     He  describes  things  only  by  their  most  familiar 
uses. 

Summary:  Pietrp  is  neither  so  vigorous  nor  so  efficient  as  his  brother. 
The  Binet  and  Simon  scores  of  7.6  and  9.2  do  not  express  the  difference 
as  well  as  the  school  rating  of  2B  and  56,  and  the  interpretation  in  terms  of 
growth  of  an  arrears  of  two  full  growth  periods.  Pietro  is  physically  in 
poorer  condition,  mentally  less  constructive,  and  less  discriminating, 
though  slightly  more  persistent  and  industrious.  He  is  so  poorly  re- 
lated to  his  surroundings  and  to  the  mental  activities  of  boys  of  his  age, 
and  especially  to  boys  of  the  more  influential  adolescent  age,  as  to  make 
him  the  plaything  of  others.  In  the  conflict  of  social  influences,  some  more 
mature  and  some  less,  some  more  concerned  for  his  advantage  and  some 
less  so,  he  is  poorly  equipped  to  distinguish  and  take  sides.  In  this  situa- 
tion his  brother,  with  the  peculiar  characteristics  described  in  the  study 
of  his  Efficiency  Test,  is  the  deciding  influence.  He  needs  to  be  removed 
from  this  particular  influence  and  to  be  put  under  influences  that  work 
singly  to  his  advantage. 


FROM  THE  BORDERLINE  GROUP 

Grogan,  Michael. 

Age:   12  years,  7  months,  26  days. 

Binet  and  Simon  score:  8.8. 

Physical  growth  period:  Pre-adolescent. 

Mental  growth  period:  Later  childhood,  the  less  active  type. 

Retardation:  One  growth  period. 

School  grade:   3 A.     Repeated  2A.     His  marks  are  B  and  C. 

General  Information. 

Physical  Condition:  He  is  pale  and  delicate  looking,  with  a  pinched  in 
mouth.  His  lower  teeth  are  in  bad  condition.  He  has  adenoids  and  en- 
larged tonsils.  Needs  circumcision.  He  bites  his  finger  nails,  speaks 
indistinctly;  he  is  anemic  and  fourteen  per  cent,  below  the  normal  weight. 
He  is  poorly  fed  as  the  family  is  partly  depending  on  charity.  At  an 
early  age  he  fell  out  of  a  window  and  hurt  his  head.  He  now  has  a  pain 
in  his  head  which  he  attributes  to  this  fall.  He  states  that  the  pains 


56 

come  on  in  school  and  at  that  time  he  cannot  think;  also  that  he  feels 
the  same  pain  when  he  raises  his  arms  in  the  physical  exercises.  He  likes 
to  stay  in  bed  mornings  to  sleep  as  he  is  often  awake  nights  especially  when 
he  has  to  care  for  his  mother.  He  is  said  to  have  been  born  "with  a 
black  veil  over  his  body." 

Family  History:  His  father  died  of  pneumonia;  he  may  have  had  tuber- 
culosis; is  said  not  to  have  been  a  heavy  drinker.  His  mother  has  a 
cough;  has  heart,  nerve  and  stomach  trouble;  these  are  said  to  be  due  to 
nervous  shock  following  a  railroad  accident. 

He  is  the  youngest  of  four  living  children;  one  child,  Peter,  is  a  mental 
defective;  the  mother  states  that  he  was  normal  until  he  was  thirteen 
when  he  fell  down  an  airshaft.  The  two  other  children  are  normal. 

School  Problem :  The  mother  states  that  he  is  not  a  truant  but  she*keeps 
him  home  when  she  needs  his  help.  He  is  apparently  unable  to  apply 
himself  with  any  profit  to  school  work. 

BiNET-SiMON  INTELLIGENCE  TEST 
YEAR  NUMBER  OF  TESTS 

123456 
I,     2 

3 
4 
5 
6 

r    }     I     J     }     1 

8  t         t         %         I         % 

9  J        -         I        -        - 
10        -        -        -        - 

12  %  -  -  % 

15 

Adult    - 

INTERPRETATION  OF  BINET-SIMON  TEST 

Binet  and  Simon  Intelligence  Test:  He  has  reached  the  pre-adolescent 
stage  of  physical  development,  but  his  mental  performances  are  those 
characteristic  of  the  preceding  stage  of  later  childhood.  Even  these 
activities  are  of  the  less  efficient  type.  Of  the  later  childhood  activities 
tested  he  showed  certain  control  of  but  two  of  the  simpler  ones,  namely 
the  recognition  of  different  pieces  of  money  and  making  change.  Of  the 
early  adolescent  activities  tested  he  showed  an  independent  judgment  of 
the  length  of  lines.  He  also  showed  some  comprehension  of  the  practical 
aspects  of  some  simple  virtues.  This  suggests  that  his  emotional  temper- 
ament is  developing  somewhat  in  advance  of  his  general  intelligence  and 
that  it  may  become  a  source  of  appeal  in  gaining  his  co-operation  for 
further  efforts  at  self-development.  At  least  it  may  prove  effective  in 
reducing  any  tendency  to  active  opposition  toward  good. 

INTERPRETATION  OF  GENERAL  MENTAL  TEST 

Efficiency  Test:  I.  General  Mental  Habits:  His  power  to  form  general 
mental  habits  has  been  exercised  to  little  advantage  for  the  past  four 
years.  His  handwriting  is  of  the  grade  of  an  efficient  child  of  8  years. 
He  spells  correctly  only  simple  words.  He  does  not  punctuate.  His 
vocabulary  is  meagre  and  his  speech  ungrammatical.  He  did  not  count 
correctly  either  backward  or  forward.  Though  he  could  give  the  day 
and  date  orally  he  did  not  write  it  correctly,  and  he  could  not  make  a 
written  statement  of  when  and  where  he  was  born. 

II.  Ready  Adjustment  to  Particular  Situations:  His  power  to  adjust 
himself  to  particular  situations  is  not  great.  He  showed  poor  manual 
co-ordination  in  making  crosses  and  in  pegging.  His  ability  to  get  and 
reproduce  simple  oculo-motor  images  is  low.  He  showed  a  slightly 


57 

better  capacity  to  catch  and  reproduce  simple  word  pictures,  but  not 
enough  to  make  him  apt  in  exchange  of  ideas.  He  recalled  6  figures, 
which  suggests  that  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  definite  appeal  to  him  to  get 
anything  like  fair  reproductions. 

III.  Persistence  in  Gaining  Effects.     When  called  on  to  perform  other 
similar  tasks  requiring  more  continued  effort  he  did  slightly  more  satis- 
factory work.     He  recalled  9  out  of  10  objects  shown  him,  with  only  one 
mistake  in  order.     He  recognized  simple  and  playful  relations  between  the 
objects,  though  he  did  not  show  more  than  a  very  childlike  ability  to  think 
and  to  talk  about  these  relations.     He  did  not  waver  in  his  careful  com- 
parison of  the  lengths  of  lines.     His  least  satisfactory  work  was  in  the 
cancellation  test  where  he  did  not  manage  to  get  himself  well  under  con- 
trol until  the  last  four  lines.     Scattering  successes  before  this  brought 
the  total  number  of  lines  correctly  scored  up  to  10  out  of  a  total  of  20 
lines.     He  compelled  himself  in  the  same  fashion  to  a  correct  judgment  of 
weights  on  the  second  and  third  trials.     With  the  much  more  mature 
tests  of  rearranging  mixed  sentences  he  could  do  nothing.     On  the  whole 
his  practice  ability  is  unexpectedly  good  as  compared  with  his  readiness 
to  grasp  definite  tasks  and  indicates  clearly  a  superiority  of  organic 
power  as  compared  with  his  motor  control. 

IV.  Ability  to  Elaborate  Situations:   His  immaturity  and  his  ineffective- 
ness in  the  use  of  his  slight  abilities  was  shown  clearly  by  the  poverty  of 
the  results  obtained  when  he  undertook  constructive  work  with  definite 
materials  and  under  definite  conditions.  ^  He  added  slowly,  getting  cor- 
rect results  in  2  out  of  3  additions  made  in  2  minutes.     His  time  for  the 
form  board  was  quite  long.     He  worked  unintelligently  at  the  puzzle 
given  him  for  some  time  and  was  obliged  to  give  it  up.     He  failed  com- 
pletely in  constructing  a  pattern  from  torn  paper,  and  could  do  nothing 
in  constructing  a  story.     No  amount  of  persistence  seemed  likely  to  avail 
to  bring  him  any  mastery  of  these  more  elaborate  tasks. 

V.  Forming  Purposes  and  Holding  them  in  the  Face  of  Alternatives: 
When  set  at  work  requiring  the  carrying  out  of  purposes,  or  the  forming 
of  new  purposes,  on  the  level  of  pre-adolescent  interests,  he  was  quite 
ineffective.     He  was  handicapped  in  this  by  his  inability  to  grasp  simple 
situations,  and  by  his  small  vocabulary  and  limited  stock  of  ideas  above 
the  level  of  names  for  objects  and  actions.    So  far  as  these  tests  can  show 
he  is  limited  to  recognizing  the  purposes  of  others  and  is  not  apt  at  form- 
ing them  for  himself.     Purposive  thinking  and  acting  are  not  likely  to 
engage  him  as  his  co-operation  with  others  who  are  more  purposeful  can 
be  secured  only  by  appeals  to  his  feeling  or  his  self-interest. 

VI.  Affirming  Positive  and  Negative  Elements  in  Situations:   In  spite  of 
his  poor  ability  to  direct  his  mind  toward  more  remote  accomplishments 
he  showed  some  ability  to  recognize  likenesses  and  difference  and  to  des- 
ignate them  clearly.     This  moderate  power  of  recognition  in  elaborate 
situations  parallels  the  moderate  ability  for  persistent  practice  shown  in 
the  third  group  of  tests,  and  holds  out  a  possibility  that  he  may  develop 
some  power  to  perceive  and  relate  as  he  grows  physically  more  mature. 
Summary:    It  is  apparent  that  his  school  grade  of  2B  does  not  measure 
his  advance  in  gaining  experience  of  the  common  facts  of  life  and  it  is 
difficult  for  him  to  be  interested  in  the  work  of  this  simple  grade.     The 
fact  that  he  has  a  fair  memory  for  simple  facts,  the  power  to  recognize 
associations,  and  a  feeling  for  ideas  of  conduct,  shows  that  he  has  a  poten- 
tial ability  that  is  not  getting  physical  re-enforcement  or  stimulation  from 
the  remoter  form  of  activities  characteristic  of  school  life.     It  his  physical 
debility  and  mental  listlessness  could  be  offset  by  a  free  and  vigorous 
out-of-door  life,  with  abundance  of  good  and  normal  conditions  for  the 
exercise  of  right  impulses,  under  a  maximum  of  appeal  to  good  feeling, 
it  is  probable  that  he  would  show  some  improvement  in  general  efficiency. 
It  seems  probable  that  neither  his  physical  nor  mental  development 
will  be  very  strong.     The  next  year  will  probably  determine  whether  there 


is  any  latent  power  to  mature  mentally.  Unless  some  change  for  the 
better  takes  place  the  chances  are  that  he  will  be  baffled  in  his  efforts  at 
self-support  and  that  he  will  feel  deeply  his  inability  to  prosper. 

Mackaye,  Wardwell. 

Age:  9  years,  3  months,  20  days. 

Binet  and  Simon  score:  8.2. 

Physical  growth  period:  Later  childhood. 

Mental  growth  period:   Early  childhood,  the  more  active  type. 

Retardation:  One  growth  period. 

School  grade:  3 A. 

General  Information. 

Physical  Condition:  He  has  a  high  narrow  forehead  and  long  face.  He 
looks  thin  and  delicate.  He  has  a  typical  adenoid  facies,  he  is  a  mouth 
breather  and  drools. 

Nothing  abnormal  is  reported  about  his  birth.  He  had  measles,  chicken- 
pox  and  whooping  cough.  He  has  had  his  tonsils  operated  on  unsuccess- 
fully and  is  to  come  to  the  hospital  for  a  complete  enucleation.  He  is  also 
to  have  a  circumcision.  He  has  had  a  growth  removed  from  the  genitals. 
He  formerly  had  enuresis  but  does  not  suffer  from  this  now. 

Family  History:  His  parents  were  born  in  the  United  States.  His 
mother  died  of  tuberculosis  seven  years  ago  and  his  grandmother  died  of 
the  same  illness  recently.  He  has  one  sister  seven  years  old.  His  father 
is  again  married. 

Home  Life:  He  lived  with  his  father  for  four  years.  He  has  boarded  in 
various  places,  recently  with  a  family  on  Staten  Island.  His  father  does 
not  think  that  his  present  boarding  place  is  satisfactory  as  he  seems  to 
have  neither  enough  to  eat  nor  sufficient  care.  The  woman  in  charge  of 
the  place  reports  him  as  being  most  unsatisfactory  in  his  conduct.  She 
also  states  that  he  is  suffering  from  an  eruption  on  the  skin  which  is  prob- 
ably an  itch. 

School  Problem:  He  is  reported  to  have  been  a  truant  from  school  while 
living  on  Staten  Island.  After  coming  to  New  York,  February,  1914,  he 
stayed  away  from  school  for  two  days.  He  has  done  the  same  two  other 
times  since  for  a  whole  day  and  a  half  day. 

His  father's  mother  always  thought  that  there  was  something  wrong  with 
him  mentally  and  a  physician,  a  friend  of  his  father's,  also  thought  that 
there  might  be  something  the  matter  with  him.  At  school  he  is  reported 
to  be  forgetful,  inactive,  nervous  and  sometimes  irritable.  He  is  apt  to 
get  into  trouble  with  the  other  children.  He  does  not  tell  the  truth,  he 
shows  a  great  deal  of  self  pity,  tells  tales  on  the  other  children,  but  seems 
kind  to  little  children.  His  reports  show  him  to  be  good  in  reading  and 
hand  work  and  poor  in  other  work,  especially  with  numbers. 

BiNET-SiMON  INTELLIGENCE  TEST 
YEAR  NUMBER  OF  TESTS 

123456 
If     2 

3 


i 

8 

9 
10 

12 

15 


59 

INTERPRETATION  OF  BINET-SIMON  TEST 

Binet  and  Simon  Intelligence  Test:  In  his  physical  development  he  has 
just  passed  out  of  early  childhood.  In  his  mental  development,  as  shown 
by  these  tests,  he  is  still  in  early  childhood,  and  still  actively  engaged  in 
getting  the  experiences  appropriate  to  that  period.  The  tests  for  the 
early  childhood  period  that  he  passed  successfully  have  a  simple  practical 
value  for  gainful  purposes.  He  knows  the  months,  tells  the  time  of  day, 
and  is  mainly  correct  in  his  statement  of  the  date.  He  also  makes  change, 
calculates  the  value  of  stamps  of  two  denominations,  and  executes  as 
many  as  three  simple  commissions  given  him  at  one  time.  His  vocab- 
ulary is  fairly  ample.  He  is  limited  in  the  successful  use  of  these  abilities 
by  his  inability  to  name  colors,  his  inability  to  give  more  than  the  simplest 
description  of  pictures,  or  to  describe  common  articles  apart  from  their 
simpler  uses. 

His  retardation  of  one  growth  period  cannot  be  considered  serious,  but 
his  uneven  use  of  the  abilities  of  the  earlier  period  warrant  a  closer  study 
of  his  general  efficiency. 


INTERPRETATION  OF  GENERAL  MENTAL  TEST 

Efficiency  Test:  I.  General  Mental  Habits:  He  shows  great  unsteadi- 
ness in  his  attempts  to  set  up  his  more  general  mental  activities.  He  hesi- 
tated over  the  day  of  the  week.  He  could  not  tell  the  place  of  his  birth. 
He  wrote  his  address  so  that  it  is  necessary  to  conjecture  his  meaning. 
His  handwriting  is  very  unsteady  and  poorly  formed,  though  still  legible. 
His  spelling  of  simple  words  is  usually  good,  with  lapses,  as  "bild"  for 
build,  "lott"  for  lot,  "mouny"  for  money,  "sickness"  for  success,  "diffi- 
kulty  "  for  difficulty.  He  paid  no  attention  to  punctuation.  He  counted 
103  crosses  he  had  made  as  99.  For  a  boy  in  the  3A  grade  he  is  still  labor- 
ing heavily  in  the  first  stages  of  his  general  mental  development.  He  must 
have  tried  hard  or  been  favored,  to  get  his  present  classification. 

II.  Readiness  in  Meeting  Particular  Situations:    His  responses  here  are 
so  unready  as  to  emphasize  the  instability  referred  to  in  the  first  group. 
He  is  unable  to  command  an  immediate  definite  response,  as  shown  by  his 
poor  grade  of  crosses,  his  poor  and  slow  pegging,  his  heavy  and  effortful 
tracing  of  lines,  and  his  poor  representation  of  his  oculo-motor  reactions 
in  reproducing  geometrical  forms.     His  language  performances  are  poor, 
but  not  distinctly  worse  than  his  motor  performances.     He  recalled  the 
major  portions  of  sentences  that  are  long  and  difficult  in  the  early  child- 
hood period.     The  most  evident  indication  is  of  a  general  muscle  insuffi- 
ciency, shown  especially  in  the  unsteadiness  and  strain  in  his  use  of  his 
short  muscles. 

III.  Persistence  in  Gaining  Effects:  He  has  an  amount  of  interest  in  situ- 
ations superior  to  his  ability  to  meet  them.     He  gave  a  good  recall  of 
objects,  and  his  recall  of  the  order  was  equally  good.     Both  were  normal 
for  his  age.     He  did  not  recognize  as  well  the  possible  relations  between 
the  objects,  and  did  not  comment  thoughtfully  on  those  relations  he  did 
recognize. 

His  failure  to  advance  steadily  in  this  work  of  recognition  gives  a  good 
picture  of  the  mental  situation.  That  it  is  not  altogether  due  to  natural 
inability  is  shown  by  his  finally  judging  the  weights  on  the  third  trial. 
That  it  is  due  to  a  state  of  instability,  that  he  cannot  at  present  master, 
is  indicated  by  his  work  in  the  cancellation  test,  where  he  scored  correctly 
only  2  lines  out  of  20,  and  made  44  errors  out  of  a  possible  200.  His 
work  grew  poorer  as  he  progressed. 

An  interesting  relation  between  his  limited  power  to  recognize  and  I 
much  more  limited  power  to  apply  himself  is  shown  in  his  attempts  to 
rearrange  the  mixed  sentences.     Two  were  failures.     In  the  third  1 
sought  to  avoid  a  direct  issue  by  giving  a  fairly  clever  paraphrase  of  the 


6o 

sentence.  It  seems  just  to  give  him  some  credit  for  his  effort  and  the 
right  direction  it  took. 

He  appears  to  have  some  native  ability  but  to  be  unable  to  command  its 
use  in  such  a  way  as  to  get  a  cumulative  effect.  His  best  effort  is  at 
recognizing  and  repeating.  It  does  not  appear  that  in  his  present  con- 
dition he  will  benefit  by  forced  application.  He  is  not  able  to  do  more 
than  easy  review  work. 

IV.  Ability  to  Elaborate  Situations:  The  quality  of  his  mental  perform- 
ances did   not   improve  in  his  attempts  to  work  constructively  under 
fixed  conditions.     He  tried  4  additions  in  2  minutes,  but  succeeded  in 
only  the  first.     The  simple  calculation  given  him  proved  too  mature  for 
his  comprehension,  as  did  the  paper  tearing  test.     He  put  the  forms  in 
the  board  with  fair  speed,  but  could  do  nothing  with  the  puzzle  given  him. 
In  the  problem  of  inventing  a  story  he  showed  that  he  could  make  a 
narrative  sentence,  but  did  not  furnish  supplementary  material  from  his 
imagination  readily,  and  showed  a  tendency  to  be  fanciful  and  not  really 
constructive.     He  first  stood  the  splints  on  end.     Failing  in  this  attempt 
the  idea  still  remained  with  him  of  building  something  high,  and  he  began 
his  story.     "Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  man  who  was  in  a  house  and 
could  not  get  out,  so  one  day  he  made  something  high  and  climbed  out." 
After  this  suggestion  was  exhausted  no  other  came,  and  he  began  play- 
ing with  the  objects  and  whispering  symbolic  sounds,  as  he  handled  them 
over  and  imitated  the  activities  suggested  by  them.     He  kept  this  play 
up  for  three  minutes  apparently  completely  oblivious  of  the  examiner. 

In  general  he  did  not  show  himself  able  to  meet  fixed  conditions  requiring 
sustained  and  delicate  physical  effort.  It  was  significant  that  his  diverg- 
ence in  the  direction  of  futile  play  activity  did  not  deteriorate  to  the  level 
of  irrelevance. 

V.  Mastering  Alternatives  in  Purpose  Making:    His  work  in  this  group 
of  tests  was  childish  and  revealed  only  a  limited  present  capacity  for 
mastering  thought  situations.     He  finished  two  of  the  incomplete  sen- 
tences, that  fit  his  mental  age,  well  and  the  third  somewhat  unsatisfactorily. 
The  sentence  building  given  him  was  too  mature  and  cannot  be  counted 
against  him.     Although  he  could  not  give  opposites  for  the  words  sub- 
mitted he  offered  many  good  synonyms  or  continuations  of  the  idea 
inherent  in  the  words.     It  is  of  importance  that  his  mind  continues  to 
work,  and  that  his  superfluous  work  shows  no  irrationality.     Unfortu- 
nately his  abundant  word  product  was  not  recorded.     His  purposive  con- 
trol of  his  thinking  process  is  poorly  developed  but  seems  to  be  present 
in  a  latent  form.     No  dominating  aberrant  purposes  came  into  view,  and 
he  can  be  charged  with  nothing  more  than  irrelevancy. 

There  is  a  probable  suppression  of  the  purpose  making  behavior  and  a 
likelihood  that  this  has  a  definite  somatic  basis. 

VI.  Dealing  with  Positive  and  Negative  Elements  in  Situations:    The 
omissions  in  pictures,  a  simple  early  childhood  test,  failed  to  command 
his  attention.     He  showed  his  power  to  recognize  differences  in  value  in 
other  tests  of  this  period  that  are  more  linguistic  in  character,  suggesting 
that  the  failure  mentioned  is  to  be  associated  with  his  motor  instability. 
He  gave  comparisons  of  remembered  objects,  he  made  simple  descriptions 
of  the  uses  of  objects,  and  he  detected  absurdities.  ^  The  details  of  the 
last  mentioned  test  were  not  available,  and  this  is  particularly  unfortunate 
as  it  is  one  of  the  most  mature  of  his  efforts  and  might  have  had  consider- 
able diagnostic  significance. 

Summary:  This  is  one  of  the  very  clear  instances  where  an  interpretation 
of  the  test  depends  on  a  careful  scrutiny  of  the  contents  of  the  response, 
as  well  as  its  technical  value  for  scoring  purposes.  In  general  his  responses 
show  much  mental  debility,  and  this  characteristic  overshadows  the 
question  of  his  natural  ability.  The  whole  question  of  interpretation 
turns  on  the  nature  and  degree  of  his  motor  unsteadiness,  and  the  sort 


6i 

of  result  that  might  be  obtained  in  a  systematic  effort  to  re-establish  his 
peripheral  steadiness.  There  is  no  testimony  to  show  that  in  his  institu- 
tional life  any  such  efforts  have  been  made.  Since  he  left  the  institution 
he  has  been  passed  around  in  boarding  houses,  and  the  last  report  from 
him  is  that  he  is  probably  suffering  from  scabies.  He  should  have  definite 
physical  treatment,  and  should  for  a  time,  at  least,  be  given  simple  review 
work  in  full  quantity  rather  than  much  new  work.  He  has  not  been  a 
truant  for  such  a  time,  nor  in  so  flagrant  a  way,  as  to  make  him  a  candidate 
for  the  Disciplinary  School.  On  the  other  hand  he  is  especially  in  need 
of  good  home  influence.  If  these  can  be  provided  he  may  well  prove  able 
to  respond  to  school  opportunity  and  overcome  some  of  his  present  mod- 
erate retardation. 


III.  SUMMARY  OF  THE  GENERAL  MENTAL  TEST 

On  account  of  lack  of  forms  for  many  of  the  tests,  it  is  impossible  to  make 
an  exact  statement  of  the  efficiency  of  any  individual,  or  even  to  rank  the  whole 
list  with  any  conclusiveness.  Under  the  circumstances  the  best  that  could  be 
done  was  to  select  out  the  most  inefficient.  As  quickly  as  possible  this  was 
done  at  the  point  where  the  inefficiency  of  the  individual  becomes  so  great  that 
he  appears  to  be  shut  out  from  the  intellectual  activities  of  the  group  to  which 
his  age  would  naturally  assign  him.  •  Such  an  inability  to  participate  in  the 
activity  of  his  fellows  may  well  be  considered  a  natural  and  urgent  reason  for 
wanting  to  wander  off  into  another  environment,  where  the  demands  are  less 
taxing,  and  where  appreciation  is  less  grudgingly  bestowed.  The  exciting 
cause  does  not  matter  so  much  as  do  the  length  and  inflexibility  of  attitude 
of  the  school  and  of  the  pupil.  As  a  usual  thing  the  school  does  not  think  it 
can  change  its  attitude.  When  the  pupil  cannot  and  will  not  modify  his  atti- 
tude, any  display  of  vigor  on  either  side  naturally  brings  about  some  degree  of 
alienation.  The  inability  of  the  pupil  to  meet  the  minimum  demands  of  the 
school  situation  constitutes  a  latent  occasion  for  an  earlier  or  later  breaking 
down  of  the  community  of  interest  between  them.  The  process  followed,  then, 
was  a  general  one  of  exclusion,  based  on  the  consideration  of  the  fact  that  the 
act  of  truancy  is  merely  a  going  into  effect  of  an  implicit  renunciation  of  useful 
relations  between  teacher  and  pupil.  The  details  of  this  process  of  exclusion 
are  set  down  here,  group  by  group,  for  the  entire  set  of  tests. 

GROUP  I.  ESTABLISHMENT  OF  GENERAL  HABITS  OF  THINKING  AND  EXPRESSION. 

This  group  of  tests  differs  from  the  others  in  the  generality  and  simplicity 
of  the  performances  tested,  and  in  the  distinction  it  makes  between  the  power 
to  set  up  mental  symbols  for  the  general  facts  of  experience  and  the  habit  of 
accurate  and  complete  use  of  these  symbols.  In  inspecting  the  performances 
of  a  set  of  individuals  like  this  one,  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in  mind  how  little 
there  is  in  their  experience,  outside  of  the  formal  demands  of  the  school,  to 
force  them  to  deal  exactly  with  material  so  general  in  its  nature  and  so  sym- 
bolic in  its  mode  of  expression.  It  is  necessary  to  recognize  the  inertia  of 
naive  minds  toward  situations  like  these,  and  also  to  recall  the  degree  to  which 
fairly  efficient  minds  depend  on  the  pressure  of  practical  necessity  to  keep  them 
to  the  mark  in  such  matters  as  legible  writing,  ready  statement  of  the  exact 
date,  and  full  as  well  as  accurately  written  statement  of  addresses.  Allow- 
ance should  be  made  here,  if  anywhere,  for  the  influence  of  environment. 

The  actual  showing  in  this  group  is  as  follows.  Only  two  individuals  gave 
the  name  of  the  city  in  giving  their  address,  and  not  one  gave  the  state.  Only 
5  out  of  24  gave  the  complete  day  and  date.  Handwriting  was  for  the  most 
part  legible,  but  was  not  in  any  case  well  established  and  free  from  signs  of 
inco-ordination.  No  one  attained  a  grade  higher  than  the  fifth  from  the  top 
of  Thorndike's  Handwriting  Scale.  Punctuation  was  for  the  most  part 
ignored.  Correct  spelling  was  the  exception.  Inaccuracy  in  simple  counting 
was  the  rule.  Nevertheless  21  out  of  24  counted  backward  from  20  to  o 


62 

correctly.  As  this  test  is  short,  and  as  the  forward  counting  test  was  long  and 
the  majority  of  mistakes  made  in  the  latter  part  of  the  counting,  it  is  probable 
that  the  inaccuracy  is  due  to  a  lack  of  power  of  sustained  effort  rather  than  to 
lack  of  ability. 

Eleven  out  of  the  twenty-four  were  so  generally  inefficient  as  to  seem  to 
be  shut  out  from  participation  in  the  general  thinking  characteristic  of  their 
school  environment. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  survey  it  was  found  that  all  of  those  who  showed 
this  marked  deficiency  Group  I  showed  marked  deficiency  throughout,  and 
the  group  of  the  inadequate  is  pretty  well  marked  out  in  this  first  set  of  tests. 

GROUP  II.     READINESS  IN  MEETING  NEW  SITUATIONS. 

The  tests  selected  for  this  group  are  simple  operations  which  require  no 
special  direction  of  the  attention,  no  manipulation  of  the  material,  and  are  per- 
formed in  very  brief  time.  The  test  of  immediate  recall  of  figures,  to  be  of 
much  differential  value,  should  have  been  given  in  more  extended  form.  The 
recall  of  sentences  would  have  shown  better  results  if  it  had  been  given  in  more 
extended  and  more  carefully  graded  form.  The  other  three  tests  furnished 
good  material  for  comparative  purposes. 

Twenty-two  out  of  twenty-four  repeated  5  figures.  This  test,  which  is 
one  of  the  eight  year  old  tests  in  the  Binet  and  Simon  scale,  is  evidently  too 
easy  for  the  pre-adolescent  group. 

Continuous  cross-making  brought  out  marked  differences.  Beginning 
with  the  highest  grade  and  running  down  to  Grade  5,  the  number  of  individuals 
in  each  grade  was  I,  8,  9,  5,  i.  The  6  individuals  in  the  2  lowest  grades  were 
considered  inadequately  fitted  to  do  any  work  requiring  much  skill. 

t  Pegging  is  a  more  severe  test,  and  also  brought  out  striking  differences. 
Dividing  the  results  into  5  grades  beginning  with  a  time  of  55  to  65  seconds  for 
loo  holes,  and  running  up  by  ten  second  intervals,  the  distribution  of  indi- 
viduals for  the  different  grades  was  7,  n,  4,  I,  i.  The  6  individuals  in  the  3 
lowest  grades  were  considered  as  belonging  to  the  inadequate  group. 

Recall  of  geometrical  forms  as  given  was  a  hard  test.  On  account  of  the 
usual  familiarity  with  ordinary  forms  the  simpler  ones  were  given  in  a  group 
of  4,  and  then  3  more  elaborate  ones  were  given  singly.  The  test  was  vitiated 
by  the  fact  that  the  last  two  forms  shown  had  become  familiar  to  most  by 
former  experience  with  the  Binet  and  Simon  test.  As  the  best  use  that  could 
be  made  of  this  test  under  these  conditions,  the  first  two  very  simple  ones  were 
neglected  and  the  6  who  recalled  none  of  the  remainder  were  counted  in  the 
inadequate  group. 

The  recall  of  the  sentences  given  was  too  hard  for  all  but  one  of  the  24 
and  must  be  counted  too  difficult  a  test  for  such  a  group. 

In  the  3  tests  that  gave  usable  results,  10  manifested  one  or  more  instances 
of  unreadiness  so  great  as  to  exclude  them  from  effective  participation  in  school 
activities. 

There  was  a  poor  showing  in  the  matter  of  motor  co-ordination  and  con- 
trol, as  in  the  cross-marking,  where  14  out  of  24  were  below  the  second  grade. 
The  motor  responses  were  slow,  as  was  shown  in  pegging,  where  14  out  of  24 
required  70  seconds,  a  fair  allowance  for  the  test  being  60  seconds.  Only  2 
out  of  the  24  drew  correctly  from  memory  all  of  the  7  geometrical  forms.  Only 
one  out  of  24  reproduced  exactly  two  sentences  of  14  and  24  syllables  re- 
spectively. 

GROUP  III.    PERSISTENCE  IN  GAINING  EFFECTS. 

The  tests  in  this  group  differ  from  those  in  the  preceding  group  in  dealing 
with  more  abundant  material,  in  more  highly  organized  form,  and  for  a  longer 
time.  The  material  in  some  of  the  tests,  as  in  the  recall  of  objects,  arrange- 
ment of  weights,  and  cancellation,  requires  no  mental  interpretation  to  judge 
correctly  of  its  use.  In  other  tests,  as  grouping  the  objects,  estimating  lengths, 
following  directions,  and  arranging  sentences,  considerable  mental  work  has 


63 

to  be  done,  in  which  little  resource  can  be  had  to  motor  aids.  One  ability  is 
required  in  all  of  them,  namely,  that  of  continuous  effort. 

The  results  obtained  bring  out  conspicuous  differences  in  efficiency.  In 
the  recall  of  objects,  in  which  8  out  of  10  in  order,  with  a  score  of  80,  is  con- 
sidered a  good  performance,  only  3  reached  80  or  above.  Counting  70  and 
below  as  a  poor  score,  13  were  conspicuously  inefficient. 

In  grouping  the  objects  with  some  more  fundamental  reason  than  recogni- 
tion of  familiar  association,  14  out  of  24  showed  conspicuous  inability  to  de- 
scribe the  reasons  for  the  combinations  they  made.  This  list  of  14  is  a  long 
one,  but  the  test  is  searching,  as  the  possession  of  the  ability  to  recognize  and 
discuss  relations  is  one  that  is  indispensable  to  participation  in  the  common 
activities  of  school  or  society.  The  tests  of  recall  and  association  show  some 
degree  of  correlation.  Of  the  15  who  failed  to  make  good  associations  9  made 
a  poor  recall  of  the  objects. 

The  judgment  of  weights  and  lengths  did  not  bring  out  so  many  differences, 
but  the  comparison  of  the  two  types  of  judgment  brought  to  light  a  consider- 
able group  of  inadequates.  Of  the  13  who  failed  to  get  the  weights  all  three 
times,  9  failed  in  the  judgment  of  lengths.  Details  of  the  weights  test  were 
not  preserved,  so  that  no  closer  comparison  can  be  made. 

The  cancellation  test  showed  marked  differences  in  efficiency.  Only  two 
cancelled  the  whole  field  of  numbers  without  error.  Fifteen  averaged  one 
error  in  cancellation  in  every  two  lines.  Below  this  the  tendency  to  error  in- 
creased rapidly.  The  total  of  errors  for  15  individuals  above  the  limit  of  10 
errors  in  20  lines  was  52.  The  total  of  errors  for  the  remaining  9  was  243. 

Had  it  been  possible  to  give  a  good  directions  test  the  total  result  for  this 
group  would  have  been  more  satisfactory,  but  this  test  was  omitted  for  acci- 
dental reasons. 

The  mixed  sentence  test  given  was  hard  for  this  group.  Only  one  rear- 
ranged all  three  sentences  correctly.  Only  8  got  any  correct  results.  Twelve 
others  tried  all  three  and  failed  in  all.  Four  failed  to  make  an  effort  in  one  or 
more  of  the  sentences. 

Those  who  failed  in  3  or  more  of  the  5  tests  given  were  counted  as  so 
lacking  in  persistence  in  meeting  situations  that  required  special  outlay  of  time 
and  effort  as  to  make  it  difficult  for  them  to  participate  in  school  life.  These 
numbered  n  in  all. 

GROUP  IV.    ABILITY  TO  ELABORATE  SITUATIONS  UNDER  GIVEN  CONDITIONS. 

This  group  of  tests  requires  not  only  readiness  and  persistence  but  also 
sustained  and  comprehensive  interest  and  lively  manipulation  of  materials. 
The  materials  of  the  group  are  varied.  In  one  test  are  numbers  that  are  to 
be  summed  up  into  one  comprehensive  number.  In  another  test  there  are 
puzzles  where  dissected  pieces  have  to  be  fitted  together  in  a  way  that  is  com- 
pletely determined.  In  another  a  folded  paper  is  torn  and  the  shape  and  loca- 
tion of  the  missing  parts  have  to  be  constructed  with  the  aid  of  a  pencil  sketch 
while  the  paper  is  still  folded.  In  these  three  tests  the  conditions  are  quite 
definitely  fixed.  A  fourth  test  requires  the  working  out  of  simple  time  prob- 
lems by  the  aid  of  numbers,  with  the  use  of  more  than  one  fundamental  process 
of  arithmetic.  The  fifth  test  requires  the  utilization  in  one  comprehensive 
description  of  10  objects  suggestive  of  rustic  life  just  being  invaded  by  present 
day  methods  of  travel.  The  last  two  tests  are  clearly  the  more  difficult. 

In  the  adding  test  5  of  the  24  subjects  failed  to  get  any  correct  results. 
Counting  3  a  minute  of  these  short  additions  a  moderate  accomplishment,  8 
only  showed  average  ability,  in  what  is  one  of  the  simplest  and  most  familiar 
of  school  tasks,  and  only  one  of  the  8  was  absolutely  accurate  in  his  work. 

Of  the  two  calculations  given  both  are  practical  for  the  sixth  grade  and 
one  is  practical  for  the  fifth  grade.  These  calculations  were  plainly  too  hard 
for  these  subjects,  1 1  of  whom  do  not  reach  the  fifth  grade,  and  17  of  whom  do 
not  reach  the  sixth  grade.  Only  one  solution  was  found  for  the  simpler  prob- 
lem and  none  for  the  harder  problem. 

In  the  paper  tearing  problem  I  out  of  the  24  was  successful. 


64 

The  form  board  test  was  a  satisfactory  one,  as  it  was  finally  accomplished 
by  all,  and  brought  out  a  striking  difference  in  time  of  performance.  Count- 
ing 20  seconds  as  a  liberal  time  in  which  to  place  all  the  forms,  9  of  the  24 
exceeded  this  time  by  50  per  cent. 

In  the  construction  puzzle,  which  presented  the  same  sort  of  problem  in 
more  elaborate  form,  this  sort  of  inefficiency  came  out  more  strikingly.  Count- 
ing 100  seconds  as  a  liberal  time  in  which  to  place  all  the  pieces,  1 1  took  more 
than  double  the  necessary  time  and  4  sextupled  it. 

The  same  sort  of  constructive  imagination  is  called  for  in  the  test  where 
use  of  language  is  involved  in  inventing  a  story.  There  were  7  successes  out  of 
the  24  attempts.  Even  this  credit  must  be  doubtfully  given,  as  the  stories, 
with  one  exception,  were  of  poor  quality. 

GROUP  V.    DEALING  WITH  ALTERNATIVES  IN  PURPOSIVE  THINKING. 

In  the  previous  group  a  considerable  amount  of  free  mental  work  was  called 
for.  At  the  same  time  the  outcome  was  pretty  definitely  fixed  by  the  limita- 
tions of  the  materials  offered.  In  this  group  much  more  freedom  is  allowed. 
The  starting  point  is  definitely  established  in  several  of  the  tests,  as  where 
sentences  are  started  but  not  finished;  words  are  given  for  which  a  definite 
alternative  is  prescribed;  other  words  are  given  which  must  be  combined  in 
some  common  use;  and  pictures  are  submitted  for  interpretation.  The  test 
which  allows  for  the  freest  mental  movement  is  that  in  which  a  subject  is  called 
upon  to  write  as  many  separate  words  as  possible  in  a  given  time.  This  test 
is  by  no  means  as  free  from  conditions  as  it  would  seem  to  be  at  first  sight. 
The  exigency  of  writing  the  largest  possible  number  in  a  given  time  sets  up_a 
condition  that  throws  the  mind  back  on  a  characteristic  form  of  movement  in 
the  use  of  language  and  flow  of  ideas  that  displays  its  limitations  in  a  decisive 
manner,  even  revealing  at  times  definite  pathological  states.  This  test  was 
used  in  the  very  limited  manner  prescribed  in  the  Binet  and  Simon  scale, 
where  the  sole  judgment  passed  is  on  the  number  of  words  produced  in  a  given 
time.  For  some  of  these  subjects  the  word  list  was  preserved,  but  not  in  a 
sufficient  number  to  make  possible  the  definite  judgment  that  is  desirable  in 
the  case  of  a  group  with  such  peculiar  characteristics.  The  results  of  this 
test  are  not  very  valuable  for  the  purpose  of  ranking  the  individual  members 
of  the  list,  but  have  some  slight  value  for  the  purposes  of  exclusion  to  which 
resort  is  made  in  this  summary.  The  unfinished  sentences  depict  situations 
which  allow  different  solutions,  some  in  practical  action,  others  in  practical 
judgments.  There  are  two  groups,  the  first  three  sentences  being  simpler 
and  more  practical.  The  second  group  of  five  calls  for  some  reflection  and 
experience.  In  the  first  group,  5  of  the  24  found  satisfactory  solutions  for  all 
three,  and  10  more  found  satisfactory  solutions  for  2  out  of  3.  This  test  is 
evidently  well  within  the  range  of  this  group  and  its  suitability  as  a  type  of 
test  was  well  demonstrated.  This  makes  it  the  more  interesting  to  notice 
that  in  the  second  group,  in  which  there  are  5  chances,  20  failed  to  find  a  single 
satisfactory  solution.  Combining  the  two  groups  and  counting  failure  to 
make  any  good  solution,  or  only  I  good  one  out  of  8,  as  demonstrative  of  in- 
adequacy, 7  individuals  fell  into  the  extremely  inefficient  group. 

In  the  test  where  three  given  words  must  be  included  in  one  comprehensive 
statement  only  6  succeeded.  The  test  as  it  stands  was  of  little  value  for  the 
purpose,  but  2  individuals  made  a  more  obvious  failure  than  the  others. 

The  opposites  test  presents  a  list  of  words  for  which  the  subject  is  sup- 
posed to  find  in  his  vocabulary  alternatives  that  present  an  exactly  opposite 
idea.  Two  groups  of  words  were  given,  one  decidedly  harder  than  the  other. 
The  hard  list  was  beyond  the  efficiency  of  this  group  of  subjects.  Eight 
attempted  to  give  the  entire  20  hard  opposites  but  only  I  gave  as  many  as 
4  correctly,  and  16  gave  none  correctly.  In  the  easier  list  more  success  was 
obtained,  and  the  list  is  one  of  differential  value.  No  one  gave  more  than  13 
exactly  correct  opposites.  Only  8  gave  more  than  10  correctly.  Twelve  gave 
2  or  less  than  2  correctly.  Counting  as  inadequate  those  who  gave  none  or 
only  one  there  were  7  in  the  least  promising  group. 


65 

In  the  free  word  list  there  were  only  5  who  succeeded  in  giving  orally  60 
or  more  words  in  180  seconds,  that  is  more  than  one  word  in  3  seconds.  The 
number  of  words  dictated  was  not  recorded  in  3  cases,  which  makes  it  impossible 
to  make  any  fair  estimate  of  the  result. 

A  bare  description  was  easy  for  a  group  of  this  maturity  of  experience. 
Nineteen  out  of  the  24  gave  satisfactory  descriptions  of  all  3  pictures.  IP  the 
interpretation  of  the  situations  shown  in  the  pictures  a  widely  different  result 
was  obtained.  Eleven  of  the  24  failed  to  give  any  satisfactory  interpretation. 
None  interpreted  all  3.  One  interpreted  2  pictures  and  10  interpreted  one. 

On  account  of  the  fact  that  all  the  tests  in  this  group  deal  with  language 
materials,  an  additional  test  was  given  with  more  objective  materials.  The 
one  chosen  was  a  variation  of  the  distribution  test  usually  given  with  mixed 
cards.  In  this  test  the  material  to  be  sorted  is  60  sticks  of  6  colors,  4  inches 
long  and  l/&  inch  square.  The  time  was  recorded  and  brought  out  striking 
differences  in  efficiency.  Those  who  took  as  much  as  90  seconds,  that  is,  1 }/£ 
seconds  for  each  stick,  were  counted  as  extremely  inefficient.  They  numbered 
7  in  all. 


GROUP  VI.    DEALING  WITH  POSITIVE  AND  NEGATIVE  ELEMENTS  IN  THE  SAME 

SITUATION. 

The  tests  in  this  group  cover  a  wide  range  of  thinking  activity.  Only  one 
test  is  given  where  objective  materials  are  presented.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  objectivity  it  is  a  poorly  constructed  group.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
language  activity  it  calls  for  the  production  of  a  satisfactory  variety  and  range 
of  materials,  from  the  comparison  and  definition  of  familiar  objects  to  the 
paraphrase  of  simple  general  terms.  It  includes  one  good  test  for  suggesti- 
bility in  which  contradictory  statements  are  made  as  if  they  were  within  the 
range  of  possibility,  and  the  subject  is  asked  to  detect  the  inconsistency. 

The  test  which  calls  for  the  detection  of  omissions  in  mutilated  outline 
pictures,  which  is  included  in  the  8  year  Binet  and  Simon  tests,  was  passed  by 
1 8  of  the  24.  It  is  evidently  a  simple  test  for  these  subjects.  The  6  who  failed 
showed  a  major  degree  of  inefficiency  on  this  occasion,  whatever  they  might 
show  under  stress  of  a  more  practical  necessity. 

Comparison  of  familiar  objects  in  simple  language  was  easy  for  these  sub- 
jects. Like  the  preceding  test  it  is  a  little  difficult  to  present  in  such  a  way 
that  any  urgency  is  felt  about  carrying  on  the  thinking  process  with  particu- 
larity. Only  one  failed  to  make  any  comparison.  Two  failed  to  give  more 
than  one  comparison.  Eleven  gave  all  three  comparisons.  Much  more  satis- 
factory use  of  this  test  could  have  been  made  if  the  full  statements  had  been 
recorded  instead  of  only  success  or  failure,  as  examination  of  the  statements 
frequently  brings  out  very  definite  degrees  of  inefficiency. 

The  definitions  test  is  another  which  is  hard  to  put  exactly  in  true 
problematic  form.  What  is  called  for  first  is  a  description  of  the  terms  pre- 
sented. What  is  ultimately  desired  is  such  a  description  of  each  term  as  will 
differentiate  it  from  other  objects  belonging  to  the  same  class.  To  give  the 
use  of  the  object  satisfies  the  first  condition.  To  give  the  descriptive  use  of  the 
object,  or  such  a  description  of  it  as  to  indicate  the  appropriate  use,  is  the 
only  thing  that  will  satisfy  the  second  condition.  Practice,  either  in  the 
higher  primary  grades,  or  in  more  mature  forms  of  experience  should  give  a 
decided  advantage.  The  full  answers  were  not  recorded,  so  that  a  discriminat- 
ing judgment  of  the  results  could  not  be  made.  Success  or  failure  in  3  out 
of  5  of  the  terms  presented  was  the  only  result  recorded.  Of  the  24  subjects 
1 1  failed  entirely.  The  list  is  long  but  the  test  is  searching  and  a  low  degree 
of  thinking  power  is  evidenced. 

The  test  calling  for  the  detection  of  absurdities  is  one  that  it  is  possible 
to  put  very  directly.  Its  general  character  has  been  described  already  in  this 
section.  Success  and  failure  in  3  out  of  5  was  the  only  score  recorded.  As  it 
is  not  fair  to  assume  that  the  18  who  failed  were  all  inefficient  to  the  point  of 
inadequacy  no  benefit  was  secured  from  the  test.  The  intrinsic  value  of  the 


66 

test  has  not  been  found  to  be  very  great  aside  from  the  fact  that  its  results  are 
easily  computed. 

A  description  of  the  3  simple  general  terms  presented  was  difficult  for  the 
subjects.  Only  one  gave  all  three.  Six  gave  two  and  six  gave  one.  The 
test  is  given  by  Binet  and  Simon  among  the  12  year  tests  and  is  plainly  hard 
for  them,  and  it  would  not  be  fair  to  rank  the  1 1  who  failed  as  totally  inade- 
quate without  considering  the  details  of  the  responses,  which  unfortunately 
were  not  recorded. 

The  number  of  tests  which  were  applied  with  any  sort  of  satisfaction 
amounted  to  22.  As  has  been  noted,  they  vary  greatly  in  their  usefulness  for 
the  purpose  in  hand,  and  when  summed  up  can  only  be  used  as  evidence  of  a 
roughly  drawn  line  between  inefficiency  and  extreme  inefficiency.  If  the  num- 
ber of  scores  indicating  extreme  inefficiency  is  added  together  for^each  indi- 
vidual, it  is  evident  that  those  who  approach  a  total  of  22  scores  in  22  tests 
must  differ  appreciably  from  those  who  approach  a  total  of  none.  The  sum 
of  the  scores  for  inefficiency  for  the  whole  group  of  24  truants  ran  as  follows: 
16,  13,  12,  12,  12,  12,  12,  12,  10,  9,  8,  7,  7,  6,  4,  4,  4,  4,  4,  3,  3,  2,  i.  Counting 
somewhat  arbitrarily  as  a  symptom  of  extreme  inefficiency  a  total  of  10  scores, 
the  number  of  extreme  inefficients  is  9.  According  to  this  rough  method  of 
separation  of  the  more  inefficient  from  the  less  inefficient,  there  is,  therefore, 
some  ground  for  stating  that  9  out  of  the  24  border  line  cases  of  truancy  are  so 
unfitted  to  participate  in  the  social  and  intellectual  life  of  the  school  that  they 
are  practically  cut  off  from  its  directing  influence  and  may  well  be  considered 
cases  of  social  alienation.  They  are  truants  because  they  have  no  fitness  for 
conformity.  They  cannot  conform  because  under  simple  and  natural  test 
conditions  they  show  that  they  are  not  capable  of  acquiring  a  general  stock  of 
knowledge  in  communicable  forms;  nor  of  meeting  new  situations  readily; 
nor  of  persisting  in  the  face  of  steady  demands;  nor  of  altering  situations  in 
which  they  find  themselves  to  their  advantage,  nor  of  forming  and  carrying 
out  simple  purposes;  nor  of  breaking  up  situations  so  that  at  least  some  simple 
features  may  be  dealt  with  in  the  light  of  experience.  Whether  this  proportion 
of  9  out  of  24  hopeless  cases  is  typical  of  all  groups  of  what  are  called  in  this 
study  of  truancy  "border  line  cases,"  lying  between  hopeless  and  explainable 
cases,  remains  to  be  seen.  This  test  accomplishes  its  purpose  if  it  raises 
definitely  the  question  of  a  considerable  degree  of  truancy  due  to  a  type  of  a 
mind  which  is  unfitted  to  conform  to  the  social  and  intellectual  demands  of 
school  life,  while  yet  possessing  considerable  insight  and  power  of  self-direction. 

The  general  validity  of  this  plan  of  exclusion  appeared  to  be  well  supported 
by  the  outcome  of  the  whole  investigation.  The  limitations  of  the  method  are 
obvious,  but  the  practical  results  seem  to  be  more  convincing  and  significant 
than  could  be  obtained  by  a  simple  Binet  and  Simon  test  or  by  any  test  which 
seeks  to  measure  the  efficiency  of  separate  mental  processes  and  sum  them  up 
into  a  numerical  equivalent  of  individual  efficiency. 


PUBLIC  EDUCATION  ASSOCIATION  OF  THE  CITY 
OF  NEW  YORK 

FOUNDED  1895.    INCORPORATED  1899 

40  WEST  32ND  STREET,  NEW  YORK  CITY 


The  Public  Education  Association  was  founded  in  1895  to  study  the  problems 
of  public  education,  investigate  the  condition  of  the  common  an< 
schools,  stimulate  public  interest  in  the  schools  and  propose  from  time  1 
such  changes  in  the  organization,  management  or  educational  metlv 
might  seem  necessary  or  desirable.     Its  efforts  are  confined  to  the  we! 
the  New  York  City  public  schools,  but  it  a  'iape  these  effor 

with  the  best  educational  theory  and  experience  of  the  country. 

OFFICERS  OF  THE  A 
CHARLES  P.  ROWLAND, 
JOSEPH  R.  SWAN,  -I dent 

MRS.  SCHUYLER  VAN  RENSSELAER,         \V.  K.  BRICE, 
Honorary  Vice-Pre:-  HOWARD 


EXECUTIVE  COMMITT; 

MRS.  MIRIAM  SUTRO  PRICE,  Chair; 

LEONARD  P.  AYRES  Miss  C.  R.  LOWELL 

W.  K.  BRICE  J.  K.  PAULP. 

CLYDE  FURST  URGE  D.  STRAYER 

MRS.  E.  C.  HENDERSON  JOSEPH  R.  S\\ 

CHARLES  P.  HOWL  \ 

The  work  of  the  Association  is  carried  on  through  a  trained 
ber  of  committees.     The  Children 

one  of   the  pieces  of   int<- 
iene  of  School  Child, 


HYGIi 


ELEANOR  H.  JOHNSON,  CV/u  FRANKLIN 

ELISABETH  A.  IRV, 


LEO  ARNSTEIN 

S.  JOSEPHINE  BAKER,  M.D, 

MRS,  HENRY  B.  BARNES,  JR. 

SIEGFRIED  BLOCK,  M.D. 

HOWARD  BRADSTREET 

HARRIET  DANIELS 

ELIZABETH  E.  FARRELL 

EDWARD  R.  FINCH 

J.  C.  FISK,  M.D. 

LAURA  GARRETT 

M.  P.  E.  GROSZMANN,  M.D. 

GEORGE  A.  HALL 

FRANKLIN  C.  HOYT 

HARRIET  M.  JOHNSON 


OLIVE 

ELLEN  S.  MAR> 

MRS.   V  'CHELL 

\K  K.  PER, 
NORA  REYN. 
JANE  E.  R 

I    i 

!.D. 

: 

I.  OGI 


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